David pushed back from the table and began to clean the kitchen, looking for anything on which he could vent his anger. One of Grandma Hunter’s plates shattered as he threw it against the old porcelain sink. “I want you to talk to me.” He turned and faced his brother, anguish plain on his face. “I want my brother back.”
The heartfelt plea struck deeper than any other words could. Max’s eyes slid shut and he felt emotion thicken in his throat. “I’m back, Dave.”
“Your body is back, Max. I want you.” Incredibly, David’s voice broke. “I missed you.” He swallowed hard, fighting the tears. “I love you. We all do. Come home, Max.”
Max’s shoulders sagged as he dropped his face into his hands. How could he have hurt the people he loved the most this way? “I never told Elise.”
David knelt on the cold linoleum and pulled Max’s hands from his face. “You never told her about the accident? About the wheelchair? Why the hell not?”
Max’s laugh was strangled and coarse. “Because I’m a … what did you used to call me?”
“A self-pitying sonofabitch.”
“Yeah. That’s what I was.”
“So you could never bring her home, because she’d hear it from one of us.”
“Something like that.”
“Max.” Compassion mixed with disgust.
“I know.”
“No, you don’t. Ma thinks you’re ashamed of her.”
Max looked up, his expression fierce. “I never once felt that.”
“Then why have you stayed away so long, Max? Why did you move clear across the country? And don’t say because of the job. You could have gotten a position at any university in Chicago. And why when you came home were you always so … remote?”
Max looked away. “Lots of questions.”
“You come up in conversation occasionally,” David replied dryly.
“And what’s the verdict?” Max heard the sneer in his own voice, but could no more have exorcised it than he could have competed in a 5K race. Not anymore anyway.
David rocked back to sit on his heels. “Guilty. We think you feel guilty. For Pop.”
“That has got to be the most ridic—” He broke off as David raised a brow knowingly. Damn David for being so intuitive.
“It’s stupid to feel guilty after all this time, Max.”
Max looked down at David, still on his knees. “I guess I owe you guys an explanation.”
David just shrugged at that. “So why did your Elise marry someone else?”
Max bit his lip and chose to ignore Elise’s most obvious reason. “She said she needed someone with more … pizzazz.”
“She said ‘pizzazz?’” David’s laugh came rolling from his belly. “I didn’t think that uptown people were allowed to use that word.”
“You think you’re so brilliant.” But Max couldn’t quite pull off the scorn he’d been trying for as his own lips were twitching. David was so good at making him laugh.
“I picked up a few things at Harvard.”
“Maybe a few nurses at the rehab center.”
“I had to have something to fill the lonely hours you were in class.”
“You’re a big jerk.”
“Ooh, tough guy.”
Max sobered. “She said I wasn’t spontaneous enough for her.”
“Well, that’s true enough.”
Max’s brows bunched under his frown. “Excuse me?”
“You’re not spontaneous, Max. Face it. You think too damn much.” David rose and dusted off his knees. “I have to go now. I have three engines to work on tomorrow.”
Max pulled himself to his feet, wincing as the ever-present pain seared his hip. “How’s the business coming?” David had started his own garage with his share of Grandma Hunter’s inheritance.
“We pulled a profit last year. Finally.” David busied himself with his gloves and coat. “Oh, you had one other message. Somebody named Caroline.”
Max’s heart jumped. “My secretary.”
David waggled his brows. “Oh, really?”
“Shut up. What did she say?”
David grinned. “Only that she’d arranged for the moving service to pick up your things. Somebody’s coming for them tomorrow and she wanted to be sure someone would be home.”
“She works fast.” Her face appeared in Max’s mind’s eye, her blue eyes laughing up at him while her dimple deepened. Then his mind’s eye drifted lower, remembering the way she’d filled out that blue sweater. Oh, man. He’d bet his subconscious was busily concocting some interesting fantasies to populate his dreams tonight.
“Oh?”
Max frowned. “Get your mind out of the gutter.” Which is exactly where his own mind had been headed. “She is a perfectly delightful young woman with a son.”
“And a husband?”
“No. She doesn’t have one of those.”
“And you’re going to be spontaneous?”
Damn, Dave was good at reading his mind. “I was considering it.”
David barked a laugh and moved to the front door. “Only you would consider being spontaneous, Max. Only you. I’d like to meet this Caroline in person.”
Max felt a surge of jealousy stab his heart, so sudden it shocked him. He didn’t even want to think of David looking at Caroline, much less meeting her. “Don’t—” He cut the command off mid-sentence, but the single angry word echoed and the rest of the sentence hung suspended between them. Don’t you dare. Unmistakable hurt filled David’s eyes and Max suddenly felt lower than dirt.
“I said I’d like to meet her, Max, not run off to Tahiti with her. I can get women all on my own. I don’t need to steal yours,” he added quietly. He pulled the front door open and Max winced, more from the frost on his brother’s face than the cold air that rushed to fill the entryway.
Max made it to the door in time to clasp his brother’s shoulder. “David. I’m sorry.”
“Yeah.” David’s single word was filled with harsh rebuke.
“Please. Can you turn around and look at me?” Max waited until David turned, but found he couldn’t meet his brother’s hurt eyes after all. Max dropped his gaze to the hand that held his cane so tightly that his knuckles were white. “I’m sorry. I …” He shook his head and turned away. “Thank you for dinner.” And even Max could hear himself use the tone David so despised. He waited, expecting the door to slam shut. But it didn’t.
Instead, David’s hand clasped his shoulder. “What happened, Max?” he asked softly. “What happened to make you think I could ever hurt you?”
Max dropped his head, abruptly and utterly exhausted. And then the words came. As if he could have stopped them had he tried. “She couldn’t stand to look at me. Elise. Couldn’t bear it when other people looked at me with …” He let the thought trail, the silence heavier than the word would have been.
David said nothing, just squeezed his shoulder hard.
“She said she wanted a normal man.”
There. It was out. Finally. It echoed in his mind. Normal. Normal. What that joker she married in Denver was. What he wasn’t.
A long beat of silence followed. Then David cleared his throat.
“Good for her. You’re not normal.”
Max’s throat closed. Tears stung his eyes for the first time in more years than he could remember. It was amazing, truly amazing the difference made when the exact same words were uttered with different intent. When Elise had said them they were heartless and cold, devastating him. When David said them they formed a warm blanket, embracing him. Devastating him.
“You were never normal, Max,” David continued and Max could hear the tears clogging his brother’s normally resonant baritone. “You were just my brother.” He withdrew his hand and Max felt bereft.
The two stood until the silence became uncomfortable.
Max cleared his throat. “Are you busy for dinner tomorrow night?”
“If you’re cooking, I am definitely unavailable.” David’s vo
ice was light, but forced.
“How about I buy us a pizza?”
“Then I’d say you have yourself a date.” David paused. “Five or so?”
Max nodded, still facing away from his brother and the open door. “Five is good.”
The door closed and Grandma Hunter’s house … his own house was quiet. He listened to the roar of David’s classic car in the driveway until the sound died away. Then he wiped the moisture from his face. He was home. Finally.
Chapter Five
Chicago
Tuesday, March 6
10:55 A.M.
Caroline closed the door to Eli’s office with a quiet click, then turned and leaned her forehead against the cool wood of the door. She didn’t like this. Any of this. Not one little bit. The whole man-woman-seek-and-chase thing was highly overrated. Especially when the man was as shallow as a pond in summer and the woman foolish as a teenager.
She drew a deep breath through her nose, seeking the tang of the lemon furniture polish and Eli’s Old Spice that always soothed her nerves in the past. Instead she smelled the woodsy scent she’d so quickly come to associate with Max Hunter and her pulse quickened in response. In one day this room had ceased to be Eli’s, the safe haven she’d come to treasure. Now it was Max’s. She was interloping. Intruding.
Fantasizing. Oh, boy. She let out the deep breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding as the content of her dreams from the night before rushed through her head, leaving her shaken, her skin sensitized, her body throbbing where she’d never felt any such sensation before. Woman-low. Now she knew what that phrase meant. On one hand she wondered how she could have become thirty years old without feeling her pulse throbbing deep within the most private reaches of her body. On the other hand she wished she’d gone another few years without knowing exactly what she’d been missing. It was primitive. She shuddered and squeezed her legs together.
Mercy.
It was also devastating, because now she also knew the meaning of “unrequited love.” Well, unrequited lust, anyway. She breathed deeply again, trying to still her racing heart, feeling more foolish by the moment. Foolish and angry. And hurt. Mostly hurt.
Max wasn’t here. He was still in class, chatting it up with the two voluptuous beauties that sat in the front row, hanging on his every word. Missi and Stephie. Caroline rolled her eyes, remembering the way they’d laughed at his every joke, not so surreptitiously crossing their long legs, bared up to the hem of their barely decent miniskirts. Not a wrinkle. Not a scar. Probably didn’t even have tan lines marring the skin they’d kept golden through the cold Chicago winter, courtesy of the off-campus tanning salon. Young, leggy, graceful. Caroline frowned, feeling her forehead bunch against the smooth wood. And they got decent grades to boot. They didn’t even have the decency to be stupid blond bimbos that would flunk out and be forced to marry men fifty years their senior.
Caroline had waited a few minutes after class, planning to walk back to the office with him. Be honest with yourself, Caroline, she chided herself harshly. Who was she kidding anyway? She’d lingered, hoping to steal a few minutes alone with him, hoping to see those enigmatic gray eyes focused on her in that same intent way he’d looked her up and down the day before, assessing her … attributes.
She blew out a sigh, cooling her heated forehead. How ridiculous she was being. One time, one lousy time she was the subject of a man’s heated stare and it went to her head. She’d thought of nothing else the entire night. And silently cursed the knowing grins Dana tossed her way during dinner. Well, she allowed the curses that had become not so silent once Tom had gone to bed. Dana just grinned some more and reminded her to wear black the next day. Even offered to touch up her roots for her.
“I’ll touch up my own damn roots,” Caroline muttered. And she had. And for what? So Max Hunter could completely ignore her and moon over girls half his age? Well, two-thirds his age. He was thirty-six. She’d checked.
Although what did it matter? Sudden embarrassment at her own foolishness overwhelmed.
“I can’t believe this, Eli,” she murmured. “I’m jealous. I am jealous of a man who has done nothing more than smile at me.” But what a smile Max had. “I’m pathetic, Eli.” She shook her head, pivoting her forehead against the door. “I’m simply pathetic.” She swallowed hard to relieve the sudden constriction in her throat. “And I’m lonely,” she admitted in a barely audible whisper. “I’m so tired of being alone.”
She straightened and turned to look across the office her late friend had occupied for forty years. Max’s computer table now occupied the space where Eli’s marble chess table had stood. Many were the days Eli and Wade had sat here bickering over the next move, arguing about politics, about who was the greatest singer in the Rat Pack, about who would get her last homemade pastry. She’d loved to listen to them talk. Her days just weren’t complete without Eli.
Dana was right. She’d surrounded herself with safe, unavailable men. And she would continue to do so, likely with Max Hunter’s help. He may have stared a bit yesterday, measuring her up, but as soon as he got a view of the young women on campus, she’d drop to the bottom of the heap.
It was just as well. She was in no position to flirt with a man like Max Hunter anyway, with any man for that matter.
But it sure didn’t hurt her ego when he looked. As long as that was as far as she let it go.
Her eyes dropped to the box on the floor beside Max’s desk. His office supplies had arrived.
“Time to stop your woolgathering and earn your paycheck, Caroline,” she murmured, hiked her black dress up past her knees, then dropped to kneel beside the box.
Asheville, North Carolina
Tuesday, March 6
11 A.M.
Steven Thatcher paused in the doorway, surveying the Asheville PD’s homicide division. It was a bullpen setup with maps and pictures of the area’s most wanted posted all over the walls, like hundreds of other police divisions across the state. Phones rang, a printer droned and he caught the occasional flash from the copy machine from the corner of his eye. The aroma of stale coffee and microwave popcorn teased. He drew a deep breath, mentally settling in for what might be a long investigation. Be it ever so humble …
Steven stopped at the closest desk with an inhabited chair, its occupant intent on typing on an ancient manual typewriter, his thick forefingers hunting and pecking a letter at a time. Steven watched for a moment, surprised to see one of those old machines still in use. The nameplate on the large man’s desk read “Det. B. Jolley.” One could only hope he would be. Jolly, that was.
“Detective Jolley?”
Jolley looked up from his two-fingered typing, his eyes narrowed beneath bushy gray brows, his face tightened in a scowl. He is not, Steven thought, a faithful representation of his name.
“Yes?” Jolley rumbled back, his voice deep and gravelly. His eyes zeroed in on Steven’s briefcase, then raised to meet Steven’s eyes. “What do you want?”
“I’m looking for Lieutenant Ross.”
Jolley leaned back in his chair, his head slightly tilted, his gaze still narrowed. “Her office is over there.” He gestured to the far wall. “Who are you?”
Steven pulled out his badge. “Thatcher, SBI.”
A dark flush started on Jolley’s cheeks, quickly travelling to his fleshy neck. “He didn’t do it.”
Steven’s brows shot up. “Excuse me?”
Jolley stood and Steven found himself eye to eye with six feet four inches and two hundred fifty pounds of belligerent detective. “I said Winters didn’t do it,” Jolley snarled, his body leaning forward, his face close enough to give Steven a clear view of bloodshot eyes. Purposely intimidating. This was more than a hostile glance, and more than Steven had expected. “You might as well turn around and head back to wherever you crawled here from.”
Steven drew a breath, rapidly concluding it would be unwise to tell Jolley he’d ended a sentence with a preposition. “Look, Detective, i
f you’d just step aside. I have an appointment with Lieutenant Ross.”
“Ben.” Another detective appeared just behind Jolley’s right shoulder. “Sit down and take a break. I mean now, Ben.” The newcomer clapped a hand to Jolley’s shoulder and pushed him into his chair, briefly closing his eyes when Jolley grudgingly complied. He opened his eyes and in them Steven saw unveiled relief. “This way, Agent Thatcher. Lieutenant Ross has been expecting you.”
Steven followed, noting the way the man’s hands clenched at his sides. They stopped just outside Ross’s office door and the detective turned to face him. “I hope you’ll excuse Ben Jolley. He and Rob Winters have been friends for as long as I’ve been on the force. Ben was Rob’s support when his wife and boy disappeared seven years ago. Ben defended him then and is primed to do it again. Knowing it’s starting up again has most of the guys … touchy.”
Steven studied the detective’s face, his perfectly combed golden hair and wide blue eyes. He might have appeared boyish, perhaps even effeminate, but for the linebacker brawn in his shoulders and worry-worn lines crinkling the corners of his eyes. “And you? Are you touchy?”
One corner of the detective’s mouth lifted. “I think I’ll let you determine that fact yourself. I’m Detective Lambert, Jonathan Lambert. Let me know if there’s anything I can do for you while you’re here.” He turned and lightly rapped on Ross’s door, pushing it open in the same motion. “Toni, the SBI Agent’s here. Special Agent Thatcher, meet Lieutenant Ross.” And with a nod he turned on his heel and walked away, leaving Steven watching his back with a frown.
“Special Agent Thatcher?”
Steven jerked his attention back to the woman standing before him. So this was Lieutenant Antoinette Ross. He’d gotten an earful from Lennie’s counterpart in the Asheville field office, all of it exemplary. Ross was a good cop, principled. Tough. Steven raised a brow. She didn’t look all that tough, although she did look fast, her lean body that of a runner. A glance to the far wall confirmed his impression. Ross followed his eyes and a fond smile bent her lips as she looked at the photo of a runner wearing a number on her chest. “I came in two hundred and sixty-second. It was always a dream of mine, to run the New York City Marathon.”