Stonehill series collect.., p.128
Stonehill Series Collection, page 128
Her once long sandy-brown hair was layered at shoulder length with golden highlights to hide the encroaching grays. Pediatric scrubs had been replaced by tailored suits and too-high-to-be-practical heels. Instead of an oversized purse stuffed with tissues and snacks, she carried a Tumi briefcase filled with documents and a laptop that rarely left her sight. She no longer accepted a few extra pounds because she was too busy to do anything about them. She worked out for at least an hour every morning to keep her figure lean.
She wasn’t Caroline Bowman any longer.
She was Carol Denman.
And Carol Denman wasn’t too worn down to return his blatant stares. Carol Denman wasn’t too fed up with his lies, denials, and manipulations to handle whatever he planned to toss her way. She’d had a long time to recover from his antics and was more than prepared to hold her own.
Returning his deliberate gawking, her earlier assessment stood. He looked like hell. The wrinkles in his suit spoke to the cheap material and the fake leather on his shoes had worn long before the soles. The dark stain on his collar, probably coffee, was faded enough for her to know it’d been washed and set in. While she’d taken a huge step forward in her life without him holding her back, he seemed to be stuck in the same rut where she’d left him.
She embraced the sense of superiority he’d always accused her of harboring. His penetrating stares used to intimidate her. Oh, how she’d hated feeling judged—by anyone, but most especially by John. Her former self bent over backward to please him, even when that meant undermining her own self-worth. Now she was impervious to his judgment of her. Now she had the confidence to see he had been right. She was better than him. “Go ahead,” she said impassively. “Let’s have it.”
“What?”
“Whatever smart-ass comment you’re cooking up.”
He shrugged as if he had no idea what she was insinuating. “I was thinking that you look nice.”
She didn’t believe him. John always had a thinly veiled jab ready to casually kick her feet out from under her. Raising a brow, she let him know she didn’t buy his innocence.
“That outfit must have cost a few pennies.”
Ah, there it is. She smirked, making it clear his dig had missed the mark. “Yeah. A few. Still a cop?”
“Detective.”
“Life goal achieved. Congratulations. Where?”
“Dayton.”
“Never left, then.”
The twitch that played on his lips and the twinkle in his eye gave away the underlying intent of his words before he even said them—he was about to go for the kill. She braced herself for the next round.
“I never felt the need to run away.”
Tilting her head, she smiled like an angel. “You never felt much of anything, thanks to Anheuser-Busch.”
Instead of responding, he looked up at the floor indicator. She knew how his cop brain worked. How he was processing her reaction bit by bit, tucking away the information to pick apart later. His comment about her outfit had rolled off. His jab about her leaving had been rebuffed. The old approach at knocking her off balance was failing. He was analyzing the situation, putting every nuance of her voice into the right box to better prepare for his next assault.
As the elevator bumped to a stop, Carol pushed herself upright and walked out before John. The click of her shoes echoing through the tiled lobby as she led him from the building was the only sound between them. His silence, she suspected, was due to him trying to figure out what had happened to the woman he’d married.
Outside, the humid summer air enveloped her, pressed down on her, and made her feel as if she were…drowning. Or maybe that was the presence of her ex-husband sucking the air from her personal space.
She didn’t look at him as he stepped beside her and kept her pace as she strode down the sidewalk toward the parking lot. “You can follow me.”
“I took a cab.”
Of course he’d taken a cab. Driving himself would have made things too easy. She pressed a button on her keyring and a silver Lexus SUV chirped to life. She set her bag in the back and climbed in behind the steering wheel. “Don’t,” she warned when he reached for the air conditioner controls the moment she turned the ignition. “The air will take a few minutes to cool down. Be patient.”
He lifted his hands in surrender. “I’m not used to this heat. This humidity is smothering.” As she eased out of her reserved parking spot, he sank back against the tan leather seat. “Nice car.”
She let his comment fall unanswered, unsure if the compliment was sincere. The old John, the one she used to know, assumed anyone who drove expensive cars and wore fancy suits had to be some kind of a swindler. The only honest people, as far as he was concerned, were cops and nurses—an amendment he made only after she had earned her nursing degree.
He redirected the conversation when she didn’t engage. “Last I heard you were in St. Louis. How did you end up in Houston?”
“Last you heard? I didn’t keep in touch with anyone after I left. How did you hear anything about me?”
“Well, you did send me divorce papers. From St. Louis.”
A memory of sitting in a rundown law office while decisively signing her name on those papers flashed through her mind. “So I did. My husband’s job brought us here about fifteen years ago.”
“What does he do?”
“He worked in environmental sciences for a gas company.”
“And now?”
She tightened her hands around the leather-encased steering wheel as her answer echoed around her mind. “And now he’s dead.”
Her words stung her more than she suspected they surprised John. Though Tobias had been gone eight months, there were still times she poured two cups of coffee before her heart clenched in pain as she remembered he wouldn’t be joining her for breakfast. She still reached for him in the morning, lifting her head to listen for sounds that gave away his whereabouts when she found his side of the bed empty. She still picked up her phone and started to text him whenever she might be late getting home. Every time, she felt the harsh slap of reality across her soul. He wasn’t having breakfast. He wasn’t in the house. He wouldn’t receive that text. The man she had needed more than the air she breathed was gone.
“I’m sorry.” John sounded sincere.
The car started to cool, but the tension made the atmosphere as unbearable as the afternoon heat had. The proximity to the Gulf of Mexico could make summer afternoons in Houston feel unforgiving. John wiped his hand across his forehead before dragging his palm down his thigh.
Though she had grown used to the temperature and humidity, she remembered how stifling it had felt when she and Tobias had first relocated. Suppressing the urge to let her ex swelter unnecessarily, she turned the temperature down a few degrees.
She didn’t owe John an explanation, but the words tumbled out of her as the air filtering from the vent cooled. “He was hit by a truck while on his morning run. It was foggy. The guy didn’t see him in time.”
“How did you meet him?”
“When I went back to school.”
“Medical school?”
She licked her lips. “I went back for medical science. We had a class together.” Warmth filled her chest at the memory and a smile eased the tension in her jaw. “Sometimes I had to go to class straight from work. One day this snotty twenty-something made a comment about how I smelled like vomit and bleach. Tobias’s mother was a nurse, so he took great offense. He put her in her place, then asked me out to dinner. He was trying to be nice, but we had a great time. We were fairly inseparable after that.”
“Sounds familiar. We were inseparable for a while, too.”
The absurdity of his observation caused a soft laugh to escape her. “My relationship with Tobias was nothing like what I had with you.”
Despite her warning not to touch anything, he turned a vent to blow into his face. “So what do you do with your medical science degree? Because you sure as hell aren’t seeing patients dressed like that.”
She returned the vent to its original position, which she’d angled for optimal cooling of the entire cab, not just the passenger seat. “I work for a pharmaceutical company keeping it FDA compliant.”
“Working for Big Pharma, huh? That’s noble.”
She glanced over in time to catch him roll his eyes. Though she had a million ways to defend her job, she chose not to. He’d never understand that she could help people without being hands-on. In his mind, executive positions were a sham created by rich people to keep them rich.
“How are your parents?” she asked to distract him.
“Gone. Mom thirteen years ago; Dad eleven. Both had cancer.”
“I’m sorry. They were always good to me.”
“Mom was heartbroken when you left. You were like a daughter to her.”
Carol’s chest grew heavy remembering the petite woman who had always greeted her with gentle hugs. John’s mother had taken Carol under her wing, taking time to teach her things about life her mother never had. “Leaving wasn’t easy, but it was best to cut ties. She would have tried to change my mind.”
“They missed you. They hated how things ended with us. So did I. Just so you know.”
“I think we all hated how things ended, John.”
Silence hung in the air for a long moment before he muttered, “You know what I mean.”
She did know what he meant. Disappearing in the middle of the night and sending divorce papers from hundreds of miles away had been the chickenshit way out, but it was the only way she would have found the courage to leave. “We weren’t going to recover. Not after everything that happened.”
“I know.”
“I did what I had to do.”
“Yeah. And your parents?”
“Dad died of a heart attack Thanksgiving Day a few years ago. Mom sold the house and moved to Florida with her sister.”
“Sorry for your loss.”
Glancing in the side mirror, she eased into the center lane before admitting, “We barely spoke after I moved.”
“I’m not surprised.”
She focused on maneuvering through mid-afternoon traffic as quiet settled between them. Carol tried to fight the memories, but John had opened the floodgate she’d kept hermetically sealed for years. Flicking her eyes his way, taking in his profile, she could almost feel herself being propelled back in time.
Caroline lifted her gaze to the police officer. He offered her a lopsided grin in response. They’d been exchanging flirty looks at the coffee shop for two weeks. She smiled as she returned her attention to the books sprawled out across the table.
Her heart jumped in her chest when he finally made a move. The anticipation had been building, a slow burn that had risen to the point of consuming her. She thought of little else, which was not like her. Her focus tended to be firmly on the plan she had made for herself. She had her life plotted out, and a girlish infatuation with a cop hadn’t factored into it. Which, for some reason, made him that much more appealing.
He spun the chair across from her, straddling the seat as he rested his arms on the back. The brazenness of his action should have sent her running, but she was intrigued. His confidence was like a cloud that surrounded her, impeding her from seeing the warning signs that were flashing neon lights around him. “Have a drink with me.”
She couldn’t stop her grin from widening, but she kept her eyes on her books. “No.”
“Dinner?”
“No.”
“Coffee? I know you like coffee.”
“No.”
He sighed with exaggerated disappointment, as if she had been rejecting his advances for months instead of moments. She finally gave in and looked at him. Damn, he was even more handsome close up. His dark hair was unkempt, only adding to his attractiveness. His eyes were blue, like hers. The color was light at first yet seemed to darken as she stared. She now understood why people were fascinated by the ever-changing shades of her irises. Looking into his eyes was hypnotic.
She managed to tear her gaze away and look at the notes in front of her. “I’m studying for finals.”
Nabbing one of her books from the pile, he flipped through a few pages. “What’s your major?”
“Pre-med.”
“Gonna be a doctor?”
“A pediatrician.”
Dropping her book on the table, he heaved a dramatic sigh. “Oh, that’s too bad.”
That wasn’t the response she usually received. Most people were in awe of her choice. “Why’s that?”
That goofy grin formed on his lips again. “Doesn’t seem right to ask a pediatrician to play doctor with me.”
She creased her brow at his bad joke, but couldn’t help but giggle in a way that sounded more like the girls she’d despised in high school than her studious self. “As if I would anyway. I don’t even know you.”
His smile sent a thrill through every nerve in her body. Boys didn’t smile at her like that—like they wanted more from her than answers to a test or help with a paper. Boys didn’t notice girls like her. However, this man had, and Caroline’s heart was doing crazy things in her chest.
He winked, as if he hadn’t done enough damage to her insides already. “You’re right. We should fix that. Go out with me.” He lifted his hands. “I’m a cop. You’ll be perfectly safe.”
Somehow, she doubted that—she was already in danger. She didn’t know a lot about men, or dating, or…lust, but looking into his eyes made her stomach roll over and her body tingle in ways she didn’t understand.
“I’m John,” he said, extending his hand.
She hesitated before slipping her palm into his, sensing that she would be sealing her doom the moment she touched him. “Caroline.”
He opened his mouth, but she lifted her free hand to stop him. “No, I was not named after a Neil Diamond song. No, I do not like that song. No, you may not sing it to me. Ever.”
“Me sing Neil Diamond?” He chuckled. “That’ll never happen.”
“Thank you.”
“Meet me here tomorrow night at seven, Sweet Caroline.”
She started to chastise him, but he smiled and winked, and the words left her.
“Leave the books at school.”
She didn’t respond as he stood and spun the chair back around the right way. He walked away, as smugly as she’d ever seen a man walk. As he left, she debated what she should do. He was clearly going to break her heart, but there really was no deliberation to be had. She’d show up. She’d known it the second he’d asked. She’d heard sparks could fly between two people, but she’d never experienced it. Never even really believed it until the first time she’d glanced up and found John watching her. She’d instantly felt alive and a million red flags went up in her mind.
She ignored each and every one. There was something about him she couldn’t resist. She’d smiled and held his gaze and willingly walked into the web he’d spent the last two weeks spinning for her. A trap she feared she wasn’t woman enough to handle.
Twenty minutes later, Carol pulled up to a large iron gate. She waited for the inevitable lecture, but John sat silent as she slid a fob from where it was attached to her visor. He didn’t say a word as she stretched to hold it to the scanner. However, as the gates opened, he apparently couldn’t hold his tongue any longer.
“You know—”
“If you’re about to spew statistics about crime inside gated communities,” she said, “you can shut your mouth. This has been a perfectly safe place to live for the last fifteen years.”
He pressed his lips together, remaining speechless. Carol steered through the neighborhood she and Tobias had selected specifically for the children they’d never have. She pulled into the driveway of the three-bedroom red brick house that had become a one-bedroom mausoleum with an upstairs office and a shrine to the past. The large windows on the front offered plenty of natural light, but she’d rarely opened the blinds since Tobias’s death.
Seeing her neighbors going about their lives as if her world hadn’t been completely upended eight months ago was too painful. Watching life continue without Tobias was so gut-clenchingly unbearable, she tended to hide from the reminders that life did indeed go on.
The garage door rose when she pressed a button on her rearview mirror and she parked her SUV next to Tobias’s sleek black BMW 760Li. John didn’t say a word as he stood, looking over the sedan, but Carol suspected he was thinking how unfair it was that a guy who studied the environment got a car like that while “hardworking Joes” could barely make ends meet.
She silently dared him to make a comment, just one, about her husband. He didn’t. He met her at Tobias’s bumper and followed her through the garage.
“You should lock this,” John said when she opened the door between the garage and her kitchen without using a key.
Ignoring his suggestion, she set her briefcase on the counter on her way to the fridge. “Something to drink? I don’t have much. Orange juice. Water. Milk.” She read the date on the nearly empty half-gallon jug. “Scratch the milk. This is probably cheese by now.”
“I’m okay. Thanks.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and scanned the living room while she set the jug in the sink to deal with later.
Following his gaze, she tried to see her living area through his eyes and imagined he saw the pristine white sofas and glass-topped coffee table as sterile and unwelcoming. If she were honest, she did too, on some level, but that was how she liked things. Clean. Orderly. Uncluttered. Even so, she rarely spent time downstairs anymore. Most evenings, she walked in and filled a glass of wine, and then carried it to her office upstairs, where she worked until she went to bed.
Avoiding the rest of the house made it easier to pretend Tobias was working late or holed up in his home office. Maybe having dinner with friends. Or visiting his mother. Anywhere that didn’t involve a casket and a hole in the ground. She’d considered selling the house several times, but she could still feel Tobias here, and she wasn’t ready to leave him behind. She’d already left too much behind in her lifetime.
