Lost in Her (24 page)

“I’m sorry I haven’t kept in touch,” Ryan said. “After she died, I didn’t know what to do with myself, but that’s no excuse.”

Donal turned sad eyes on him. “I understand, son. I didn’t know what to do with myself either.”

They sat at the worn table where the three of them had spent hours talking or playing Hearts. They had even laughed together at this very table over Donal’s blatant cheating. As they each sipped their coffee, Ryan tried to think how to ask his questions so he would get answers.

“I miss her,” he said. And even as he said it, it hit him that he missed Charlie even more.

“As do I.” Donal traced the pattern of the checkered, vinyl tablecloth. “You didn’t just drop in out of the blue, did you?”

Donal had migrated to America as a young man and his Irish accent was still there in his speech. A wave of homesickness rolled through Ryan. They’d had such happy days: him, Kathleen, her father, his family. That time was gone, though, and if he was to move on, he needed answers. He decided to just spit it out.

“You knew she was pregnant, didn’t you?”

Donal’s eyes met his before his gaze shifted back to the strawberries in the middle of the green squares of the tablecloth. “Why are you asking this now, son?”

So, he did know. “Because I have to know why.” When there was no response, Ryan tried again. “Because it’s eating me alive, and there’s this girl back in Pensacola that I like a lot. I loved Kathleen with all that I was, you know that. But it seems that wasn’t enough for her. If I can’t understand why, then I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to trust again.”

The strawberry next to Donal’s coffee cup got traced twice over before his father-in-law sighed, then sighed again. “
Tá tú ag briseadh mo chroí, buachaill.”

Ryan tried to translate, but gave up. “What does that mean?”

“I said, you’re breaking my heart, boy. I loved my daughter. I love you. Which one of you do I remain true to?”

That was an easy question to answer. Ryan covered the old man’s hand with his. “As much as I wish otherwise, Donal, she’s gone. I’m still here. Your answer won’t hurt her now.”

“Talk to Patrick,” he said as the nail of his index finger dug through the middle of the strawberry, leaving a two-inch scratch.

Why would Patrick know who had fathered Kathleen’s baby? “I don’t understand. If Patrick knew something, he would have told me.”

Tears rolled down Donal’s cheeks as he met Ryan’s eyes. “Ask yourself what the one reason would be that he kept such a secret. It probably won’t help, but they both were sick with regret that they allowed such a thing to happen.”

“Patrick?” That was the only word he could get out before his throat closed on him.

Donal nodded. “I’m sorry, son. You were such a good husband to my Kathleen, and I prayed you didn’t know.”

Ryan felt as if he’d been sucker punched, losing all the air from his lungs. His own fucking brother? Without asking, he stood and blindly made his way to the bathroom. When there was nothing left but dry heaves, he stumbled to the sink and rinsed out his mouth, then splashed cold water over his face.

A knock sounded on the door. “Are you all right, son?”

No, he wasn’t fucking all right. He swallowed, trying to clear his throat. “Had to use the john. Be there in a minute.”

Forcing himself to spend another few minutes with Donal, he finally said his good-byes, promising to come again in the near future. It was a lie. He would never come again. Not that he blamed Kathleen’s father for what had happened, but he had to mentally cut ties with anything to do with his wife, including her father.

She had betrayed him with his brother, and he didn’t know which of them he hated more. A stranger, someone he didn’t know, who wasn’t supposed to be loyal to him; that he could have accepted. Maybe never understood, but he could have gotten past it.

A few blocks from Donal’s house, he pulled over and took out his cell phone, flipped to Patrick’s number, and punched Call.

“Well, if it isn’t Squirt.”

His older brother had called him that as far back as Ryan could remember. Where before it hadn’t bothered him, now he wanted to reach through the phone and wrap his fingers around Patrick’s neck until the lifeblood was squeezed out of him.

“Yeah, it’s me. When you get off?”

“My shift’s over at seven, why?”

It was close to impossible, but Ryan forced his voice to sound normal. “I’m in town. Meet me for a beer at O’Reilly’s.”

“The hell you say? Mom didn’t tell me you were coming.”

“She doesn’t know I’m here, so keep it that way.” He hung up before Patrick could ask any more questions. He returned to the hotel, parked his car in the garage, then walked down to the wharf. As he aimlessly wandered the downtown streets of Boston, he tried not to imagine Kathleen in Patrick’s arms, kissing his brother, letting Patrick know her in the ways only a husband should. It was impossible to block out what his imagination conjured.

He probably should have told his cop brother to leave his gun at home. Before the night was over, one of them might be tempted to use it.

Leaving the wharf, he walked past his hotel and up two more streets
to where Kathleen’s shop had been. Over the door, there was a sign of an outstretched palm, with the words
Madame Loka’s Palm Reading
.

Something ugly coiled inside him as he stood on the sidewalk and stared at the garish purple and green paint covering the bricks. The last time he had seen the storefront, the bricks had still been red as bricks were supposed to be, and the classy sign with Kathleen’s name on it, followed by a pair of entwined rings, had still been there. A woman dripping diamonds walked by him and entered the shop.

Ryan turned away and spent the rest of the day walking the streets of Boston, stopping for a few minutes at each place he and Kathleen had been to . . . the restaurants, the shops, the theatre. As he left each place behind, he left a bit of his rage, handing over those pieces at each stop to her ghost, because although he couldn’t see her, he could feel her.

“Why?” he asked her when he finally came to their favorite restaurant. Not expecting an answer and not getting one, he returned to his hotel. He almost called Charlie, but he needed to finish what he’d started before he tried to make things right with her.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

B
y the time he walked into O’Reilly’s, Ryan was strangely calm. Although he still needed to hear from Patrick’s mouth why he had violated every rule that existed between brothers, there was nothing Ryan could do to change it. The day he had spent exorcising his wife’s ghost was something he should have done long before. If he had, he would be home, holding Charlie in his arms, and more than anything, that was where he wanted to be.

Patrick was already in a booth along the back wall, two mugs of beer on the table. Ryan slid onto the seat across from his brother, and unable to meet his eyes, he picked up the beer closest to him and downed half of it.

“Liquid courage.”

“What?” Ryan jerked his gaze up to Patrick. There was sadness, maybe even regret in his brother’s eyes.

“Liquid courage. You know, but you don’t know how to ask me.” Patrick spun his mug in a full circle before lifting it to his mouth. “I stopped by Donal’s before coming here. I check on him a few times a week. He said you were there this morning asking questions.”

It was going to be that easy? He had thought his brother would try to deny his affair with Kathleen. Ryan studied Patrick. It would be obvious to anyone they were brothers, but Patrick was bigger, his hair redder. His green eyes were always flashing with humor, one of the reasons women loved him. Was that why Kathleen had been drawn to him? Had he made her laugh in ways Ryan hadn’t been able to?

“She was pregnant.”

Tears pooled in Patrick’s eyes. “I know.”

“This morning, when I found out it was you, I thought about killing you.”

“And I wouldn’t blame you if you had. Mom would be pissed at you, though.”

Ryan laughed, surprising himself. “Yeah, then she would’ve killed me for killing you.”

“Nah, you were always her favorite.”

“Bullshit. We were all her favorite.” Ryan sucked in a deep breath, then let it out. “Why, Patrick? I have to know.”

His brother raised two fingers when their waitress walked by. “It wasn’t supposed to happen. I want you to know that.”

“No shit,
brother
.” Ryan drained the rest of his beer, renewed anger vibrating through him.

“Every deployment, you asked me to keep an eye on her, and I always did. If I could, I’d be there when she closed her shop, make sure she safely got to her car. The last time you were gone, I stopped by to walk her to her car one afternoon. It was the day after Erin and I broke up, and Kathleen knew as soon as she saw me that I was upset. She decided I needed a shoulder to cry on and insisted we go somewhere for dinner and talk. That was—”

“That was Kathleen.” And it was. She was drawn to anyone in need. Hell, there were too many animals to count that she had rescued and found homes for. People, animals, didn’t matter, and he had loved that about her. He wasn’t so sure he did anymore.

“Are you sure you want to hear this?” Patrick asked.

“It’s not that I want to. I need to. I have to understand. I’ve been fucked up for the past year, Patrick. I can’t . . .” He paused when the waitress arrived and set two more mugs on the table. “I can’t let her go until I know why she cheated on me. Believe me, I’ve tried.” Patrick winced at the word
cheated
. Ryan didn’t give a damn if he was making his brother uncomfortable. He was the wounded party here.

“I guess I’d feel the same, if the tables were turned.” Patrick took a deep swallow of his beer, then wiped the foam from the top of his lips with the back of his hand. “We intended to eat at the Golden Dragon, but when we got there, there was a wait. So we got some stuff to go and went to my place ’cause it was closer. We were just going to talk is all.”

Ryan let out the breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding at hearing they hadn’t gone to the home he shared with his wife. If Kathleen had been with Patrick in their bed, he would have lost it. Why that made a difference, he didn’t know, but somehow it did. “Go on.”

“Isn’t it enough to know it happened? You don’t need the details.”

“How did you get from talking to fucking my wife?”

Patrick sat back as if struck. “It wasn’t like that.”

Yes, it was. “Then explain to me what it was like. Tell me why.”

“We ate, drank some wine, talked about me and Erin, drank some more, then we talked about you and she started crying. She missed you, Ryan. She didn’t understand why the SEALs were more important to you than she was.”

He’d heard that from her plenty of times. “They were never more important to me than her.”

“Are you sure about that?”

No, but he could honestly say she was
as
important to him. He’d promised he would opt out as soon as she got pregnant. He just expected he would be the one to get her that way. “So she was crying,” he said, refusing to answer the question.

“I tried to comfort her. I was the one who was supposed to be crying on her shoulder, not the other way around. We were both a little drunk, both hurting. Before we knew what was happening, it happened. It was a terrible mistake on both our parts, and we knew it.”

“Did she tell you when she found out she was pregnant, and how the hell did that happen? The condom break?” Because they had been trying to have a baby, she hadn’t been on the pill.

Patrick’s cheeks flushed. “I wasn’t wearing one. It just . . . it just happened so fast. If it helps, we were both horrified after. She said she was going to tell you when you got home and beg your forgiveness.”

“I might kill you after all, Patrick.” Suddenly, he didn’t want to hear any more. He wanted Charlie. Needed to wrap himself around her and lose himself in her sweet body.

Patrick pushed his empty mug aside. “If it will make you feel better to beat the shit out of me, I won’t try to stop you. Truthfully, it might even make me feel better if you did.”

Ryan slid out of the booth. “I don’t give a damn about making you feel better, brother.” He reached in his pocket, pulled out a twenty, and put it on the table. Ignoring Patrick’s plea to stay, Ryan walked out of the bar. When he reached his car, he fished his cell phone from his pocket and called Charlie.

“I need you, cherub,” he said when she answered.

Charlie squeezed her fingers around her phone. Although she heard the hurt in Ryan’s voice, she tried not to respond to it. It didn’t work. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“No.” A sigh. “Yes, but not on the phone. Can you come to Boston?”

There was a question she wasn’t expecting. “Why didn’t you call
me, tell me you weren’t coming home? Do you know how I felt when
I
stood at the airport waiting for you and you didn’t get off the plane?”
She laughed, the sound not pretty to her ears. “No, of course you don’t.”

“I sent you a text, telling you I was detouring to Boston.”

“Yeah, you did and it got hung up in cyberspace somewhere and didn’t show up until this morning . . . after I stood there like a pathetic idiot, watching for you to get off the plane.”

“Jesus, Charlie, I’m sorry. I should have called. I just . . . I didn’t know what to say to you.”

“Well, that makes me feel better.”

“Okay, I deserved that and anything else you want to throw at me. Come to Boston and yell at me, beat your tiny fists against my chest, bash me over the head with a hammer, I don’t care. Just come, and when you’re done punishing me, I’ll tell you everything.”

“I don’t think I should.” The man was killing her, but she had to look out for Charlie. No one else was around to do it, and a part of looking out for Charlie was protecting her heart. Not that it wasn’t already a screwed-up hot mess.

“Please, baby.” When she didn’t answer, he said, “No, you’re right, I shouldn’t be asking. I know you have your show in a few days, and you need to concentrate on that. Listen, I have to go, but when I get home, we’re going to talk, Charlie. About us.”

Her heart hammered against her chest with longing, but she ignored it. “We’ll see. Did you get the answers you were looking for?”

He laughed, and it sounded bitter. “You know that old saying—be careful what you ask for? Well, I asked for it and I fucking got it.”

Not knowing what to say to that, she remained silent.

“Sorry, I’m not myself right now. Have there been any more problems with your plane?”

“Not since I moved it to a different hangar and refused to tell anyone where.”

“Good, but don’t let down your guard, okay? You’ll call me if anything else happens, right?”

“Right. You take care of yourself, Ryan, and try to enjoy your visit with your family.”

Another bitter laugh. “My family’s half the damn problem. Remember, call me if you need me. Even if you just want to talk, call me, okay?”

“Okay.” She clicked off, then stared at the phone. What had he meant by his family being half the problem? From what he’d told her, he was close to his parents and siblings. It wasn’t until tears dropped onto the screen of her phone that she realized she was crying.

Damn him.

Charlie peered at the digital clock for the thousandth time, or for what felt like that many times. She groaned at seeing it was after midnight. Go to sleep, she ordered herself as she pulled the pillow over her head. It didn’t work. Three hundred and fifty-seven sheep counted later, she gave up. All she kept hearing was the pain in Ryan’s voice when he’d said he needed her. Before she could talk herself out of it, she turned on the lamp, then got out of bed and went to her desk, turning on her laptop. Twenty minutes later, she had a flight booked for the following morning, even managing not to gag at the cost of the last-minute ticket as she entered her credit card number.

So what if she had to live on ramen noodles for the next two years? Ryan needed her, and fool that she was, she couldn’t turn her back on him. After she packed a carry-on, she set her alarm, climbed back into bed, and fell instantly to sleep.

When the blare of her alarm woke her, she jumped out of bed, heading for the shower. Although she’d expected to regret her rash decision in the middle of the night, she felt strangely invigorated and excited. After a shower, she dressed in a pair of jeans and a T-shirt that said,
Pilot inside.
It was the tamest one she had, and if she ended up meeting Ryan’s family, she didn’t think her shirt should say,
Will fly for sex
.

When she knew Maria would be up, she called her friend. “Ryan called last night and asked me to come to Boston. I’m probably stupid for doing it, but I booked a ticket.”

“If you felt strongly enough to spend the money on a ticket, then you were right to do it. I don’t know his story, but he was so sad until he met you. What time are you leaving? I’ll take you to the airport.”

“You don’t have to. I’ll call a taxi. I just wanted to tell you where I’d be.”

“What time?”

“Eleven fourteen.” Charlie squeezed her eyes shut against the swell of gratitude for her friend.

“I’ll be out front at nine forty-five.”

“Thanks. Really, thanks. Do you have his Boston address?” It hadn’t occurred to her until then that she had no clue where to go after landing in Boston.

“Not off the top of my head, but I’ll have it when I pick you up. Pack up Mr. Bunny and I’ll take him to my house.”