Falling for his suspect, p.18
Falling for His Suspect, page 18
He’d been about four and vaguely remembered that.
“I meant—I don’t know. It’s just been a weird night.”
“I fell apart on him,” his mother told his father. “I just...when I saw you slumped there and I couldn’t get the car door open...”
“They had to jimmy it to get you out,” Greg piped in.
“It’s all a blur. I was so scared. I think I started to scream and yank on the door.”
“You did.” And he’d known what to do. How to help her. Not just with the phone call. The details. But he’d been able to comfort her.
“I don’t know what I’d have done without you there,” she told Greg, as though she’d been reading his mind.
She knew him well.
“I wouldn’t have thought you’d think you could rely on me for emotional support,” he told her. She never had before.
“Why ever not?” Both of his parents were looking at him now.
“Because. I’m not that guy. I’m the one who handles the details.” They knew him better than anyone.
“Greg, what on earth are you talking about?” His mother sat up, away from the back of the bed. “You’re my son. You and your father, you’ve always been the sources of my strength. My comfort. You remember the time I thought I had a tumor? You held my hand and told me everything would be all right, and I just knew somehow it would.”
He kind of remembered. He’d been a kid. What had he known?
“You’ve always been such a deep, sensitive guy,” she told him. He stared at her. Needing her to stop. And wishing his father wasn’t sitting there, hearing this, watching him.
“I am not deep or sensitive,” he told her. “I’m the guy on the sidelines, making sure that whatever needs to happen, happens.”
“You’re very reliable, yes, and smart, and good at keeping track of details,” she told him, “but you’re aware and sensitive, too.”
She had the wrong man. Maybe she’d worked it up in her head that he was as she wanted him to be. Mothers had a tendency to think the best of their kids.
“You keep it inside,” his mother said. “I blame your father and myself for a lot of that.”
His father harrumphed, and Greg glanced over, expecting to see disagreement on his face. Instead, he was nodding.
“All the moving around. We never gave you a chance to bond with other kids. Or have a pet. Or a sense of community.”
“I had you two,” he reminded them. “That’s all I ever needed.” These people had rescued him—a thrown-out piece of humanity—from a public restroom and made him their son. How could they think...
“We thought so at the time,” his mother continued. “We thought our love would be enough, but look at you, Greg, thirty-two years old and no relationship. No wife or grandkids in sight. And now I’m hearing this nonsense about you not caring?”
“My God, boy, you care more than any man I know,” his father boomed. “More than is good for you sometimes, maybe.”
He didn’t get that.
“You let the guilt from your breakup with that Liv woman eat you alive...”
“I let her down, Dad. Because I have no empathy...”
“You didn’t love her, son,” his mother piped in. “It wasn’t a lack of empathy. It was a lack of love. And I’m afraid, because of how you came into the world, coupled with the fact that you had little opportunity to bond as a child, that you aren’t going to let yourself be open to happiness.”
How in the hell had they gone from a normal family weekend, to a car accident and worry over his father’s life, to him being some deep guy not open to love?
“And your career,” his father said, as though pick-on-Greg night was the only thing on the agenda.
“I know, you don’t understand how I could give up a lucrative law career to...”
“You might want to let me finish,” the older man said in a tone that Greg automatically respected.
“Go ahead,” he said, instead of the “yes, sir,” he might have issued in years past.
“In the first place, I wouldn’t call working in the prosecutor’s office a lucrative law career. Those guys are grossly underpaid, in my opinion. However, your choice to be there was typical of you. You weren’t in it for the money. You were in it because you honestly cared about justice being served. And you cared too much to have your hands tied, which is why you left. Both of which made me proud as hell.”
Greg shook his head. Irritated. Maybe a little pissed at them both. But not wanting to get up and walk out.
Of course, it was late, he was exhausted, and the chair was comfortable.
“Just for the record,” he spat out, “I’m not closed off to love.”
“You just have to find the right woman,” his mother said. “Like I found your father.”
He heard her words in a different voice. In a different form. Lila McDaniels Mantle, at The Lemonade Stand, the day she was grilling him about Jasmine. “Why you?” she’d said to him. “Why should you be the one saving this particular life?”
He’d thought she was way out of line. Hadn’t wanted to hear anything she might have been trying to tell him, any warning she might have been trying to give him.
“I have to say, Dad, Mom was kind of a screaming banshee tonight,” he said, trying for a grin, to get them out of the emotional turmoil they’d fallen into. As a family, they tended to avoid this stuff.
At least he thought they had. Maybe they’d just been unbelievably lucky enough to be happy. A happy family that enjoyed being together.
“I thought I was going to lose you,” his mother told his father with one of the looks Greg had been witnessing his entire life. The one that just told you for sure that they were connected way beyond laws of the land. “I don’t know what I’d do without either one of you,” she said, tearing up again as she looked from him to his dad.
He’d always thought she was just a calm, strong person. When, in fact, he’d just never had to witness her deeply afraid or hurting. Funny how a little perspective changed so much.
Funny, too, how when you loved someone, you just knew how to be there for them.
He hadn’t loved Liv. Not his fault. Not something he could control. Not like she’d needed to be loved. Rick did, though.
In that moment, Greg knew that he wanted a home like he and his parents had shared. A home filled with love and loved ones. With a child to raise and teach and know better than they knew themselves sometimes.
He wanted to be biologically related to someone he knew, but even more, he wanted to be in a committed, loving relationship with a woman, in one residence, and to raise a family with her.
Expecting his father to make some kind of pithy remark that would make his mother smile, Greg was surprised yet again when, instead, his father took his mother’s hand, then reached out a hand to Greg on his other side. “We just need to be thankful that the good Lord didn’t think tonight was the right time to separate us, and maybe we ought to talk about the stuff that matters a bit more.”
Bowing his head, Greg wondered if the entire world had just gone mad.
Or somehow righted itself.
* * *
Jasmine was still asleep when her phone rang just after seven Saturday morning. Throwing her legs over the side of the bed, she pushed to answer so she could silence the ring as she rushed into Bella’s room to find the little girl still sound asleep.
And then headed back to her room. “Hello?” she said, as though she hadn’t been waiting most of the night to hear from Greg.
“Hey, is this too early? Did I wake you?”
He sounded different.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, I just... We were in an accident last night on the way home from the dinner...”
His voice continued on. Jasmine heard about his father being okay. About them all spending the night in the hospital. But she listened from afar.
The relief flooding through made her mind fuzzy and her body shake. She cuddled up under the covers, pulling herself together and asking for all the details. The other guy had been arrested at the scene and charged with drunk driving, with other charges expected to follow.
Greg and his parents were planning to lie low the rest of the weekend, catch up on a couple of movies, maybe play some cards. He didn’t say when he’d be calling again.
She wanted to know if he’d told them about her but didn’t ask.
He was okay. He’d called her.
That was enough.
Chapter 20
Greg had thought he’d at least text Jasmine when he got home Sunday night. He wanted to. In the end, he lifted weights instead. It had been a tough weekend; he hadn’t done any physical exercise for two days and he had a lot to work off.
He thought of her as he lay in bed, hands behind his head, staring at the ceiling. His body, which should be exhausted and needing rest, ached for her. They’d had sex once. Once. How long could it take to get over it?
Because he was pretty sure they wouldn’t be doing it again.
The weekend, the accident, the way he’d felt when he’d thought he’d lost his father, the way he’d been able to tend to his mother because he loved her that much and had just known what to do... He was seeing himself differently.
His parents’ words had been rambling around in his head for over twenty-four hours. Finding a home inside of him.
He’d convinced himself that he had an inability to care deeply. Figured it had something to do with being abandoned in a public restroom as an infant. Kind of hard to live with that your whole life and not be defined by it—at least a little bit. He’d really thought he was permanently detached. Right. He’d been real detached when he’d looked over and seen his father unconscious.
About as detached as he’d been making love to Jasmine the night before he’d left.
He still didn’t really remember his mother’s tumor scare all that much. But he was beginning to accept that there might truth in the fact that he did care deeply. His problem was being unable to fix everything. Having things outside his control.
Like the fact that he was never going to know whom he came from. But his truth was, he didn’t want to know. He had his parents.
And he wasn’t going to be able to settle for a relationship without a shared home and a family to raise. He needed those things.
He deserved them.
He wasn’t going to be as happy without them.
So Jasmine wasn’t the one.
Or rather, she was—the one he was meant to save. Not the one he was meant to love.
Chances were, after her brother’s settlement conference that week, unless Josh did the right thing and admitted what he’d done, she wasn’t going to want Greg anymore, either. She wasn’t going to trust him when she found out that he’d turned up the evidence that was going to get Josh convicted.
Even if Josh did take a plea agreement, which would require mandatory counseling, Jasmine might still turn on Greg. Josh could, and probably would, tell her that he wasn’t guilty but was taking the plea because he had no choice. With the new evidence, Josh wasn’t going to win this case. His own attorney had agreed with William on that one.
But Greg would be there for her. As long as she’d let him be. He was already getting her the truth she’d requested. For some reason, hers was the life he was meant to save. And he was damned well going to do it.
Fate had let his small family remain intact. He wasn’t about to piss her off.
* * *
Jasmine was just closing up her classroom on Monday when her phone rang. She practically dropped her bag, she was fumbling so voraciously to get to the cell before the ringing stopped. It had to be Greg. She hadn’t heard from him the night before—she figured he’d gotten in too late and had probably been on the phone with his parents. But he knew what time she finished teaching and...
It wasn’t Greg. It was Josh.
“I took the plea agreement, Jas,” were his first words. She sank down to one of the small chairs at the row of desks where she’d been standing, her eyes flooding with tears. Shivering in spite of her almost knee-length, fleece-lined red sweatshirt she was wearing with black leggings, she hugged her bag and listened, trying to determine Josh’s state of mind. To know how to help him. To wipe her nose so she didn’t sniffle and expose the fact that she was crying.
“Listen, I need to see you. They had all this stuff, and...anyway, I took the agreement because my attorney got them to lift my visitation restrictions,” he said. “He told them that I’m in the process of granting you permanent custody of Bella and asked that I be allowed to visit without restriction or supervision, dependent solely upon your say-so.”
Her heart lifted a little. She’d do whatever she had to keep Bella wholly in his life. If it was up to her, then they were home free. She could move in with him. Or he could move in with her. Either way.
“I need to see her. Jas, please? I took the agreement. Please let me see her.”
“Of course.” It would take a day or several before things were official, she got that. But Josh had sold himself out for strictly one purpose—the freedom to be in his daughter’s life. He’d already missed three weeks. “Come over for dinner,” she told him.
“I was hoping you’d bring her to the cottage.” He sounded like he was starting to cry. “I’ve signed paperwork, but nothing is official yet, and I don’t trust... I’ll tell you about it when I see you. I just... I think...someone...might be watching your place and will do anything to see me suffer more. But I need to see you two, Jasmine. Please? Just for an hour or so? And remember to turn your cell phone off.”
The cottage. Their safe place. When they’d been kids, they’d found the abandoned two-room shack not far from the land their father had owned for hunting. During the long hours with everyone together during their numerous California vacations, Josh and Jasmine would head to the cottage when they’d have to stay at their vacation home alone with their dad when he was on a rampage. Jasmine had done her best to clean the place up, in spite of rotted wood and splintery floors. She brought rugs from the vacation home their parents’ had purchased. Some pillows she’d found in the attic. A lantern that ran on batteries. And some blankets.
When they’d grown and received their settlements, Josh had bought the place. Fixed it up. She hadn’t known until one year for Christmas he’d taken her there. Surprised her with the completely renovated little cottage, complete with electric and running water.
“I’m on my way,” she told him. He’d just done the unthinkable because he loved his daughter that much. Even if the paperwork wasn’t official yet, the court had agreed to release his visitation restrictions. There was no way she was going to deny him this.
* * *
Greg got the call from William shortly after four. He’d been out investigating a barn, an old crime scene from a cold case William had been assigned, and hadn’t had good cell reception.
“He refused to take the plea,” the prosecutor told him. “We sweetened the deal as you suggested, offering to remove all visitation restrictions, and he still turned it down. Said there was nothing anyone was going to do to get him to admit to being an abuser.”
“You think he’s a flight risk?”
“His attorney didn’t think so. Says the man adamantly maintains his innocence and is confident that the truth will win out in court.”
Starting his vehicle, Greg waited while the phone switched to car mode. Either the man was more out of touch than he’d thought—making him more of a danger?—or he was...
“You think there’s a chance that he really is innocent?” William asked. “Just asking for your gut response,” he continued. “I know what the evidence says.”
A moment he hadn’t expected was right there, offering itself to him. If he sided with Josh, would William drop the case? And let an escalating situation get worse?
Let Josh continue on in denial, either just public or personal, too, until he put someone he loved in the hospital, or worse?
If he didn’t, would Heidi get away with stripping a man of everything he held dear, out of spite or revenge?
“I don’t know.” He told the truth and rang off.
He had to call Jasmine. Not to talk about the case.
Just to hear her voice.
* * *
Josh and Bella played for the entire hour. He’d greeted her with a hug. They held up their respective cell phones—a ritual of sorts—to show each device was off. Because of their shared need to always know there was somewhere they could go and be completely safe, they always turned off their cell phones before they got near the cabin. She did hers half an hour out. Josh did his when he left town.
And then he was rolling in the grass with his daughter in his arms. Jasmine had thought they’d have a chance to talk. He’d said he had things to show her. But the time was gone before she even realized it. The cottage was almost an hour from home, and she had to get the toddler fed and then it was bath and bedtime. Still, she hated to stop the fun. The sound of Bella’s giggles while her father played horsey with her, the smile on Josh’s face, were all that mattered.
“I hungry,” Bella said a few minutes later, taking care of Jasmine’s hesitation. Glancing at her brother as he lay flat on the expensive wool rug with his daughter climbing on top of his chest, she knew he knew it was time, too. His expression had grown serious. “I hungry, Daddy,” Bella said, giving a bounce and giggling.
“Well, Daddy has just the thing for you, then,” Josh said, taking her with him as he rose, throwing her up in the air but never letting her body leave his hands.
He was always so careful with her.
