The Man From Her Past Page 12

  She’d rejected his arguments before. He breathed in the cold air. She might reject him for the last time tonight, but she’d know he wanted to start over—with her and Hope. No guessing, no pretending he didn’t understand she thought he’d let her down.

  It was now or never, because neither he nor she nor Leo nor Hope had another five years to waste.

  “LET’S NOT GO TOO FAR, Van.” Second thoughts had started the moment she’d agreed to leave with him. “I don’t need time away from my father.”

  “Everyone needs a break.”

  Some thread in his tone, a huskiness that sounded like a cold—or like his voice when they’d made love all those years ago—made her stare at him across the dark car. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “Something Lang said.”

  “About my father?” She settled her hands quietly in her lap. “Something he wants you to tell me?”

  “Didn’t you hear him, Cassie?”

  “Every word he said to me.” She frowned. His profile, sharp and unfamiliar, made her hug the car door. “Are you angry?”

  “No.”

  He didn’t say anything else. She let it go. “I can’t face another argument today.”

  “Tonight,” he said, and turned down a street she didn’t know.

  “Where are we going?”

  “To my house. I’ll make you coffee.”

  “I think of you in that old Victorian.” They’d bought it just before the rape. It hadn’t been habitable, then. They’d rented the small apartment that became her idea of hell and started restoring the house themselves. “What did you do with it?”

  “I finished it.”

  “You live there?” Somehow, it seemed like a betrayal. That house, up on a hill with a guest house for her father should the need ever arise, had been the stuff of their future. Their dream of a future together. He’d lived their dream without her? “How did you do all the work?”

  “I hired a lot of contractors.”

  All the same, she didn’t want to see it. “Isn’t there a coffee shop closer?”

  “Yes.”

  “Let’s go there.”

  “I’m not trying to force you, but I want to talk, and I’d rather not have an audience.”

  “No, Van.” She put her hand on his arm. His muscles jumped. She felt them through his coat and his shirtsleeve. “I’m telling you I don’t want to see it.”

  “That’s something of an answer already,” he said.

  “To what?” He was scaring her. “You weren’t even angry with me after the—attack.”

  He glanced at her, his eyes looking black in the car. “I didn’t think you noticed.”

  “But you are angry now.”

  “Just determined. For once, you’re going to hear me out. If you send me away this time, I’ll stay gone.”

  Instinct brought a flip dismissal to her mouth. She pressed her fingertips to her lips before it escaped.

  He passed through the square, turning right at the courthouse. The road opened onto a wide avenue of Christmas lights and deepening snow, red ribbons that glittered with ice, candy-cane light poles dressed in green velvet ribbons. People strolled past shops, fathers with daughters, mothers with their own moms, families with the children hopping between their parents’ outstretched hands.

  “Oh,” she said.

  “Santa’s waiting in that little house at the end.” He pointed, but she barely had time to see before they turned again and he found a parking spot.

  “We always had to go to D.C. for shopping,” she said.

  “Honesty’s growing, even when the folks who’ve lived here since birth vote against expansion like this.”

  He opened his door and then came around to open hers, too. “It gives us a place to walk.”

  “Walk?”

  “And talk.”

  “Sounds good.” Walking would straighten out her thoughts and keep her from promising anything reckless. She didn’t necessarily trust the Christmas-induced warmth of Honesty’s new square.

  They walked around the first building. “It looks like a movie set,” she said, as they stepped into light that was almost like day.

  “It’s not real,” he said. “The buildings are, and so are the sales going on inside, but the ambience works because it’s what people want.”

  Where had her gloves gone? She tucked her hands into her pockets. “What are you trying to say?”

  “We’ve put five years’ worth of days between us because it was what you wanted, but your father and I haven’t lived. Maybe it’s different for you with Hope, but I’ve tried to make a home out of a house that was meant for you, and your father’s made a mess out of the home you shared.”

  “Things,” she said, “that we can fix for Dad.”

  “Your father needs the connection you had.” He turned her suddenly, and she found herself inside a shop filled with knitted goods. Afghans, featuring Santas and reindeer, but also ducklings and building blocks. Hooded sweaters with mittens swinging from their empty sleeves.

  Van walked straight to a set of cubbyholes filled with knit gloves. He chose a pair made of pale pink yarn. When he laid them in her nerveless hand, they were so light she hardly felt them.

  “What’s this?”

  “Your favorite color.” He covered her left hand with both of his and rubbed some warmth back into her skin. Warmth that traveled all through her body.

  She shuddered. “Stop.” And she pushed the gloves back at him.

  He took them from where they’d stuck to the wool of his navy coat. Catching her hand, he tugged her with him and laid the gloves on the cashier’s counter. “We’ll take these.”

  He paid, while she fought heaviness that nailed her feet to the wide plank floor. Need sparked by his mere concern for her.

  After he paid, she turned toward the door first. Outside, he caught her again and tried to put a glove on her hand.

  “I’ll do it.” She didn’t care for her own irascible tone. “What’s happening?”

  “You’re upset because I can still make you want me.”

  “What?”

  A woman walking by stared at her. “Cassie?”

  “Hi.” She didn’t recognize the passerby. “Visiting my father.”

  With matching poor manners, Van wrapped his arm around her shoulder and suddenly, they were standing in the doorway of the next store down the street.

  In the bay windows on either side, chocolates of every kind rested on red satin. It was like a brothel for desserts.

  “I’m sorry ahead of time for taking advantage, Cassie.”

  He curled one finger beneath her chin and urged her head up. She saw mistletoe on a silver strand before his mouth grazed her chin. She breathed in—Van and chocolate and evergreen and the freshness of falling snow.

  He kissed her cheek. His eyes were closed. His eyelashes, darker than his dark blond hair, tempted her lips. He pressed her face to his.

  “Van,” she whispered.

  He reached her mouth. It was a chaste kiss, a touching only. But still a temptation, because his hands, just beneath her breasts in her open coat, stroked the way she’d always liked, teasing, making her want.

  But his touch was light. She could have pushed him away. She could have stepped out of his arms. She knew why he was being so gentle. He was thinking of that other man, the one who’d taken her with a knife, and Van didn’t want to scare her.

  His mouth lifted for a moment. He opened his eyes. Frustrated, she moved toward him and looped her arm around his neck, dragging him closer.

  This time he kissed her the old way, the way of the first lovers and the way of the last who’ll ever live. His mouth invited her into the past, and yet, he was different. He needed her, and his hunger was in the tilt of his head, his harsh breath, the desperate clasp of his hands.

  “Wait,” he said, pulling away.

  A couple pushed past them, laughing.

  Cassie closed her eyes, and then opened them to run o
ut of the doorway with Van, into the cobbled road no car had ever dirtied. Beneath the bow-laden trees, darkness hid her embarrassment.

  “Cass?”

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  “No one cares. It’s Christmas. Everyone gives in to excess this time of year and I started it.”

  “Your voice…” She shivered. She’d awakened from dreams, hot and cold and sweating, hearing his voice, knowing she’d never feel his touch again.

  “I want you,” he said. “I never stopped. I just didn’t want to hurt you, and I had a hard time believing any man touching you wouldn’t hurt.” He laughed, pulling at his own black gloves. “I finally said just what I meant all these years. We should have tried mistletoe first thing.”

  “It happened in July.”

  “Give us a chance to forget and move on, Cassie.”

  “I don’t know if I can let you that close.” She pressed her hands together, enjoying the soft yarn against her skin. “I haven’t…there’s been no one else since I left here.”

  “For me, either,” Van said.

  “I don’t believe you.” She hadn’t been his first. She’d known the other women in town who’d been with Van. “You were always—”

  “Because I loved you.” His eyes ran over her, a moody brush of sensation that made her knees weak. She sat on a frozen bench.

  “Cassie, there’s snow.” Van pulled her up and brushed the snow off. She sat again, hard. He made room for himself beside her.

  She pressed her knees and her feet together and burrowed her hands into her pockets.

  “What do you want to do?” Van asked.

  “Go back to Washington, where it’s safe.” She remembered the man she’d fought at her shelter on her last day at home. “Where it’s safer than here with you.”

  “I’ll follow you this time.”

  “And your business?”

  “I can bring it with me or deal with it later.” He stared at the people streaming past them, their bags glittering, their laughter loud. “Although I should tell you I’m not quite as solvent these days.”

  “Are you in trouble?”

  “See, Cassie? You care.”

  “Of course I care. You were my first love, my only,” she said. “I didn’t leave because of the way I felt about you.”

  “Well, you were wrong about the way I felt,” he said. “Surely you can admit that now.”

  “Maybe. I was afraid and I wanted you to see me the same way you had before. Because maybe if you did, I’d still be the same.”

  Staring at the tips of her loafers, she jumped when he dropped his arm across her shoulders and scooted closer. “Damn that bastard,” he said.

  “He’s pretty damned, all right. Some guy knifed him in jail about eight months ago.”

  Van went as still as the frozen bench. “Why didn’t you tell me he was dead?”

  “It wasn’t your business anymore.”

  “Because of your decisions, not mine, and we just talked about him the other day.”

  “I always thought I’d feel safe if he wasn’t around. But I don’t. He can’t hurt me again, but there are others like him. I want to be big and bad and strong, but something horrible happened to me once, so I can’t stop believing horrible things can happen.” Dizzy because she’d never admitted she was still afraid, she eased into the heaviness of his arm. “Not that any of this matters now.”

  “Stay for six months.” He turned his head. His breath warmed her temple. She wished he’d kiss her again, and she was surprised. Desire had grown foreign to her. Could she feel it like any other woman?

  “What about Hope?”

  “I won’t pretend,” he said. “You know I care about her. I’m learning to care more. I can’t help myself, but I’m no saint. Give us six months to see if I can be her father.”

  “And my—what?”

  “Your husband, you idiot.”

  “You’re asking me to marry you?” She half rose, but he pulled her back down.

  “You don’t have to run for your life. I’m asking you to see if you can love me again.”

  “Do you love me, Van?”

  CHAPTER TEN

  “DO I LOVE YOU?” Cold seeped through his bones. His options made him repeat what she’d asked and then kept him silent. Say yes and terrify her so much she panicked all the way back to Washington, or tell her the truth?

  “My idea of love has changed,” he finally said, blinking a snowflake out of his eye. “It was simple before. You and I, alone. Jobs we both loved. Living together was fun.”

  “Until I was raped.”

  Each word stabbed him. He reached for her pink-covered hand and stood, urging her to come with him. “You must be freezing.”

  “You change the subject every time I talk about what happened.”

  He faced her. Around them, life went on. A mother called “Tony” in a voice only a mother used. A Salvation Army soldier rang his bell in a sonorous beat. The lights flickered on and off, painting Cassie’s skin with a pallor.

  “Do you need to tell me?” He’d never forget the first time she’d forced him to listen.

  “I need to know you don’t hate me for it. You run every time I try to be who I am now.”

  “I don’t want him to hurt you. I want to kill him.”

  “Too late.” She turned toward the street, and her glove came off in his fingers.

  He was tempted to let her go. “Why can’t we do this my way for once?”

  She glanced over her shoulder. She might have been any woman—young, happy, swinging along with commercial-bright independence. “You mean pretending we’re the same?”

  “I told you I’m not. What are you going to do?”

  “Take care of my father. Make sure Hope is as happy as I can keep her, and go home to my job. I haven’t even called my partners.”

  He caught up. “What will they do if you can’t go back?”

  “I will go.”

  “Hope told me about a bad guy who came there one night.”

  She smiled. “I’m glad she can talk about it, but I wish she’d talked to me. It’s no big deal. Some guy broke in the night before I left. In fact, I should have called to see what’s happening with him.”

  Fear ran in a trickle of sweat down his spine. Her casual tone didn’t help. “Some guy broke in?”

  His terror must have seeped into his voice. She lifted her chin, and he saw only reassurance. “I stopped him.”

  “How?”

  “With the fabled element of surprise and some skills from a good martial arts class that gave me a reason to crawl out of my apartment every day when I first moved to Tecumseh.” It was obviously the opening she’d been waiting for. “I take care of Hope and me.”

  “I know.”

  “So this talk of us staying comes too late.”

  And she walked on without him, obviously not even considering his offer to go back with her.

  EVERYTHING CHANGED the next day. Cassie woke early. Or maybe she’d stayed awake all night.

  Before light, she gave up and went outside for the paper, her bare feet stinging in the cold snow. She made a pot of tea and carried it and the paper to her father’s office, where she shut the door and turned on the television to catch the morning news.

  She basked in the slow, steady voices of gloom and doom, the inky scent of the paper and her hot tea. It was a luxury to be on her own—absolutely unnecessary to anyone.

  Thoughts of Van crept in, but he’d never said he needed her. Just wanted.

  The low tug of desire grabbed her. She pressed her hand to her stomach, her heart pounding as his kiss, his touch, replayed in her mind—and the feelings, so rare in the past five years, spread through her body.

  Did she need him?

  Questions too disturbing for a rare morning of freedom. She buried herself in the paper again and was startled to find it was past seven when she looked up.

  No one stirred upstairs. Her father and Hope must still b
e asleep. Maybe they’d like a big breakfast. She opened the door to the hall—and found the front door standing open.

  “Dad?”

  Only the hall’s icy cold answered her.

  “Dad?”

  She ran. He wasn’t out front. The street.

  Her heart thudded in her ears, shook her whole chest. Cars and snow stood beneath the spiny arms of frozen trees, but there was no sign of her father.

  “Oh, my God.” She flew back to the front door, sliding across a patch of ice on the wooden stoop. Inside, she bolted up the stairs only to find Hope’s door open, too. And her bed empty.

  Tears burned her eyes.

  How the hell could they have gotten out without her hearing? The TV. But she’d kept it low so as not to disturb them.

  What mattered was that they were gone. She stepped into flip-flops and grabbed her rental’s keys. She hadn’t noticed whether her father’s car was in the driveway. She grabbed the banister and skipped most of the stairs getting back down, praying her father’s car would be gone. At least if he was driving, he and Hope would be warm.

  It sat, encased in ice.

  Her cell phone lay on the hall table. She scooped it, ran to the rental, turned on the engine and grabbed the scraper to slash at the snow and ice on the windshield.

  Meanwhile, she dialed the sheriff’s office. But then she hit the End button.

  They’d think she couldn’t care for him or for Hope. She’d call them if she reached the main road and didn’t find her father and her baby, her innocent, possibly frostbitten baby girl.

  She had to call.

  She dialed the sheriff again and reported everything. They took her info and promised to send a car. With enough open space on the windshield and windows to drive, she jumped into the car and pulled away from the curb.

  Hardly able to feel her frozen fingers, she dialed Van’s cell number. It hadn’t changed in five years. He answered, sounding sleepy. “Cassie, is that you?”

  “Dad and Hope are missing.”

  “What?” Gone was the sleepy throatiness.

  She explained again. “Someone from Tom’s office is on his way, but Van, please could you come, too?”