A Second Chance at Love: A Hometown Hero Series Novel (9 page)

“A lot of sitting around, mostly,” he said with a shrug of his shoulders.

“That’s boring. But then, you do get to play with the president. I’m on the fence.” She looked above their heads and waved. Madeline froze, and beneath the table, her hand reached for Dean’s. Slowly, she tilted her head, until her eyes locked with Harrison’s. He had the advantage. He’d presumably seen them long before she’d realised he was watching.

“What about you, Madeline? What do you do? Cause you know the president as well. And maybe your job is a bit funner.”

“More fun,” Harrison’s voice broke into their conversation, correcting his daughter automatically. His strong body was taut and controlled, as he stood firm above their group.

Ivy showed one of her eye rolls to Dean, earning a chuckle. “What do you do?”

Madeline looked up at Harrison, her cheeks glowing with pink. “I’m a lawyer. Harrison, this is my… husband… Dean Howard. Dean, this is Harrison. Ivy’s father.”

Ivy’s father
, Harrison fumed. That’s how she chose to introduce him? Of all the ways she could have chosen to detail their relationship, that was what she said? He clenched his teeth together and extended a hand. Dean was just what he’d expected. Conservative. Wealthy. Attentive to Madeline.

He resisted the urge to crush the other man’s white-collar hands in his own firm grip.

“What kind of lawyer?” Ivy was persisting. “Sit down, daddy. You’re off duty now.”

And despite the tension of the situation, Madeline smiled at the girl’s incredibly precocious attitude.

“I’m a human rights lawyer,” she said plainly.

“What does that mean?”

“Well,” she looked up at Harrison thoughtfully. “Say your daddy wasn’t letting you go to the playground. I mean, ever. And he told you it was just because you had brown hair. I would probably go to court for you, to make your daddy take you to the playground.”

“Any excuse, hey Madeline?” Harrison said in an undertone, slipping his broad frame into one of the chairs.

Dean squeezed her hand, eyeing the other man thoughtfully. “My wife is an excellent lawyer, Ivy. She just won a huge case, for a little girl not much older than you. The New York Times came to interview her, and the president told me he thought it was a ground breaking win.”

“Woah. That’s so cool. What did you win? Like I mean, why was she um, what were you… what?”

Madeline hid her smile. “Her parents weren’t very nice.” She flicked her eyes to Harrison, whose expression was utterly inscrutable.

Dean picked up the tale. “They were mean to her. And everyone who should have been able to protect her was actually just horrible. So Madeline did everything she could to bring that girl to the States, so that she could live here, and go to a nice school, like you do.”

Ivy’s eyes lifted to Madeline’s. “I like the sound of your job better. You’re kind of like daddy. He saves people, too.”

“It’s very different, Ivy.” Harrison interjected swiftly, his ice blue eyes fixed on the man who had been deemed suitable to marry Madeline. And yes, he could see why. He was suave, sophisticated, elegant and charming.

“Hey, Ivy,” Dean leaned across the table, his dark eyes earnest. “What are those red bugs doing in that water over there?”

“Red bugs?” She laughed uproariously. “Those are lobsters, silly!”

“What’s a lopstar?” He asked, with a mock quizzical expression glued to his face.

Her laugh became even higher in pitch. “LOBSTER!” She corrected, slapping the table with each bark of laughter.

“Oh. What are they?”

“You eat them!”

“Like that?”

“No!” She rolled her eyes, the laughter finally subsiding. “Come and I’ll show you.”

He stood up, falling into step behind the girl. Madeline shot silent daggers at her husband’s retreating back, then focussed her attention on Harrison. Her heart immediately clenched. He looked so good. So good her legs ached with a desire to move to him.

“Your husband seems perfect for you,” Harrison observed without emotion.

“Why do you say that?” She asked noncommittally, though her pulse was hammering through her veins.

He leaned forward, so that his face was just inches from hers. “He doesn’t look like the kind of guy who’d drag you to his office and have sex with you all night long.”

Madeline dropped her gaze. “You didn’t drag me to your office.”

He shook his head. “And I didn’t have sex with you all night long either.” Not like he’d wanted to. He didn’t get to hold her close until she’d fallen asleep, as he’d really wanted to. “Still, I suspect your husband is more civilised than that.”

Harrison, of course, had no idea how accurate his observation was. The silence stretched between them, thick with tension and unspoken frustration. “How’s Bartlett?” He asked gruffly, casting a glance over his shoulder to where Ivy was pointing out each and every lobster to an apparently fascinated Dean.

“He’s still hanging in there,” she said quietly, unable to hold his gaze.

He shook his head. “You’re here until…”

She shrugged. “Until after the funeral, I guess.” She shook her head. “It’s weird to talk like that. I mean, he’s not even dead, but already plans are being made for a suitable farewell.”

“Your mom must be taking it hard,” he said, surprising her with his softly spoken observation.

“Yeah. She’s pretty much the only person who doesn’t accept that he’s a total A-hole.”

He laughed, without genuine humour. “Explains how their marriage has worked for so long,” he said with a shrug.

“Maybe.” She shook her head. “She adores him.”

“Yeah, I know.” He fixed his gaze beyond the window, and caught the ostentatious car, with the suited driver. “Yours?”

“Dean’s,” she confirmed with a small nod.

“It’s parked in a permit zone.”

She laughed, despite the tension that was throbbing through her. “You gonna go ticket him?”

“I’m tempted to.” He rubbed a hand across his square jaw, rough with stubble. “If only to piss your husband off.”

“It wouldn’t,” she said lightly, lifting her drink to her lips.

Harrison frowned. “You drink more wine than you used to.”

“I was twenty. I couldn’t drink. Not legally, anyways.”

“Still.”

“It’s political life. We’re at fundraisers and parties so often, and it’s just… the done thing.”

“Sounds glamorous. Like what you always wanted.”

“Do you think so?” She arched a brow. “I find it quite boring, actually.”

“You prefer nights in, with your husband?” He queried intently, his voice thick with emotion.

“I prefer a quiet life.” She shook her head. “And you? What’s it like as a single dad?”

He wanted to push her further; to learn about her life in the Capital. But he could feel her erecting conversational speed humps, finding her professional persona. So he let it go. “What do you think it’s like, Madeline? It’s hard. I’m chief of police and I have a six year old. I spend most of my life feeling like I should be somewhere else. Plus, Ivy doesn’t have a mom. She’s being raised by a guy who has no idea about girly stuff. So I worry that I’m just turning her into a little tomboy who will be teased in school.”

“No!” Madeline denied fiercely. “I can’t imagine that. She’s full of confidence.”

“A little too full.” He straightened in his seat. “But I’ll handle it.” His blue eyes were filled with quiet, searching questions. “So. Your husband is in town. Does that make you feel guilty, Madeline?”

She ran a finger around the base of her glass. “About us?”

“Of course about us.” He was impatient and his hushed words told her so. “Because you don’t seem at all concerned, Maddie, and what we did was so completely wrong.”

She put her hands in her lap and clasped her fingers together tightly. It was a trick she used whenever she felt put upon the spot. “I know that.” She swallowed. But it hadn’t been. It had been perfect. Everything she’d been wanting for such a long time.

“How can you live with yourself, Madeline?”

“What do you mean?” She asked, trying her hardest to appear calm in the face of his anger.

Beneath the table, his foot brushed hers. She jumped, but it was apparent that it had been an unintentional contact, for he pulled away almost immediately. His piercing eyes were accusing on her face. “I mean, how can you live with yourself when you’re cheating on that guy?”

Her spine stiffened. “Dean, is his name, Harrison.”

“I know you, Madeline. Or at least, I used to. Cheating isn’t your thing. So what’s going on?”

“You said it yourself,” she responded, her eyes flickering in the direction of Ivy and Dean. “You and I are different. Believe me, it’s not something I’ve made a habit of doing.”

“I don’t believe you. That’s the problem. I don’t know who you are now. If you’d asked me, eight years ago, if I’d thought you had a lying bone in your body, I would have said ‘hell no’.”

She dipped her head forward. Her cheeks were flaming with mortification. She wasn’t lying, but she was trapped! Trapped against a wall of decisions she’d made, that had led to this.

“Well? Nothing? You have
nothing
to say for yourself?” He demanded.

“Hey!” She lifted her eyes to his face. “There were two of us in that room. You knew I was married.”

“Yeah. And I didn’t care. I should have, but I didn’t. I’m happy to admit that was wrong of me. But do you know why I don’t blame myself? Because I never stopped loving you. Not really.”

“Are you saying you’re in love with me?” She demanded, her whole face focussed on the question.

“I’m saying I’m in love with who you used to be. The girl in my head, the one I love, is nothing like… you. The person in front of me. You’re some kind of very cold, very calculated, manipulative… I don’t know what.” He stood abruptly. “Look at you, Madeline! For goodness sake, you’re sitting in the diner, in the middle of a town with a population of three thousand people, and you look like you’re about to front the United Nations. Not a hair out of place.” He shook his head. “This isn’t you. At least, it’s not what I think of you as. You’re different now.  Not the girl I used to know. The other night, I was trying to find you. But you’re gone. So gone, that I just don’t recognise you anymore. And I don’t want to know… this. Whatever it is you are now.” He stalked towards the lobster tank and put an arm on Ivy’s shoulder.

Madeline’s stomach clenched in pain at his words, but she could not deny them. For he was right. Madeline Howard bore little resemblance to Madeline Bartlett. Madeline Howard needed to be tough, and so she was. She didn’t trust that everything would work out. She just knew she could make things work. Sort of. If she ignored everything her heart wanted and made do with what she had – a sham marriage to a very nice man, that kept her safe and distant from her father. That kept Diana safe from Kenneth’s foul nature. And that gave Harrison something very important, even if he didn’t realise it, and never would.

CHAPTER SIX

Precisely one hour after KB returned to the Bartlett ranch, Kenneth Bartlett the fourth took his final, pained breath. In the end, for a fierce man, he was as fallible as the rest of the human race.

His eyes clouded over, and his skin paled.

Madeline watched, from the back of the study, her own face revealing little of the emotions she felt at seeing him go. Beside her, Emily held Madeline’s hand, her body rigid with surprise. It appeared that she too had doubted Kenneth would ever leave them.

But he did. At the unassuming hour, midway between afternoon and evening, he passed from the land of the living.

Madeline felt her heart turn over in her chest, as though she was finally, absolutely free. Except, she wasn’t. Even without Kenneth’s horrible threat hanging over her head, the very nature of who and what Harrison was precluded her from being able to speak honestly to him.

She squeezed Emily’s hand and then left the study. It simply didn’t feel right to mourn with her family. KB, Arielle, Emily; their tears were genuine. But Madeline had no tears. She had only strangeness. A void where her father had used to be, but not a sad void. Nor a happy one. Just an odd lodgement of emptiness, as though the ‘guess who’ player had been knocked down on the blue plastic board.

She moved through the long hallway, her hand running against the wall for support. So perhaps she had been affected by Kenneth’s passing, after all. Colin was standing by the front door. “Colin? Where’s Dean?”

“On the phone, Ma’am,” he said, nodding towards the kitchen.

“Thank you.”

She pushed into the elegant room, and waited until he’d disconnected his call. “Oh, honey, I’m sorry. I have to go. Congress has added a stack of provisions to the bill and I need to get back to bang some heads. I’ll be back before… before…” he paused, his eyes sweeping over her. “Mads?”

She nodded, her throat thick. “It’s fine. It just happened.”

He moved to her, with the intention of hugging her, but she shook her head.

“Don’t. I’m fine. If you offer me sympathy, I might cry though. And I don’t want to. He doesn’t deserve it.”

Dean’s sadness was not for the loss of Kenneth Bartlett. After all, the man had been a prick for most of his life. But there was still a loss – a loss of what could have been. “Your father was very smart, Madeline. He could have been a very great man if he’d let his brain rule his ego.”

She nodded awkwardly. “That’s just about the nicest thing I’ll let you get away with saying about him, though.”

Dean ran his hand over her arm. “I hate leaving you like this.”

“Don’t be silly. I’d come with you if I could. I know what you’ve put into this. Go.”

“I’ll be back for the funeral.”

“I know.” She pressed a kiss against his cheek, then forced a smile to her face. “I’ll call you.”

He squeezed her hand and made to leave the kitchen. But as he pushed out the door, he changed his mind, and came back to her. “Madeline, listen to me.” His hands clasped hers, to claim her full attention.

Her bright blue eyes, suspiciously moist, fixed on him.

“Soon, we’re going to get divorced. And I know it makes sense. But I want you to know that I
do
love you. And that you’ll always and forever be my best friend.”

Her smile was frank. “You couldn’t shirk that responsibility in a million years. Go, go, go. You’re making me nervous. You’ll have ten fold additions if you don’t hurry and then the president will be forced to veto.”

He kissed her hand. “Thanks for being so understanding.”

Madeline counted to two hundred once he’d left, her blue eyes staring at the stainless steel fridge, before she picked up her handbag and moved out of the front door.

Harrison was in the middle of running one of the new troopers through some basic operational procedures when Madeline walked into the police station. She stuck out like a sore thumb in a place like Whitegate. He’d always known it, but it hit him like a ten tonne sled as she seemed to float over the old linoleum hallway.

“Clint, can you give me a moment?” He asked the new recruit without letting his eyes drop from Madeline.

The trooper left Harrison’s office immediately, subjecting the elegant stranger to a thorough once-over as he passed her by. Harrison wasn’t surprised. Dressed in a pale pink dress that fell to the knee, she was woefully inadequately prepared for the icy weather. Her eyes clung to his, and she seemed to float towards him, her feet moving while hardly seeming to touch the floor.

A muscle flecked in Harrison’s cheek. Something was wrong. She walked in and moved towards him, her expression hollow, her lips parted. He frowned and moved to the door, pushing it shut so that they were in privacy.

“What is it, Madeline?” He asked, his voice harsher than he’d intended. “What do you want? I thought I made it soundly obvious at the diner that I don’t want to be a part of this.”

She spun around, and then, he realised that she was shaking. Her whole body was trembling as though she were a feather in a nest.

And he knew.

Whether it was the connection they’d once shared, or an easy use of his deductive reasoning, he just knew. He put his arms out and she walked into them, on autopilot; like a pigeon returning to base. He wrapped her up tight and held her shivering form to his firm chest, his hands warm and strong on her back.

And then, she sobbed. She didn’t mourn Kenneth’s passing, so much as the passing of a human being. The end to a life that had been a part of her life. No matter that he’d made her miserable, he had still be a part of her orbit, and now he was gone. She lifted her hands and bunched Harrison’s pale blue shirt between her fists, and she sobbed softly, tears streaming down her face making his shirt damp.

“Hush,” he whispered against her hair, marvelling that it was still, in this moment, clipped into a perfect style. Two braids linked at the back to form a neat little ponytail. God, he wanted to pull it loose. It wasn’t fair that she could look so perfect, even in the middle of such sadness. “It’s okay,” he promised throatily. “It will be okay.”

She nodded, but she still held on, and so he kept his arms around her, passing strength from his body to hers. He wanted nothing more than to make her feel safe and supported. It didn’t occur to him to wonder why she’d come to him, instead of her husband. At least, not until her sobs subsided, and she was still, warm and soft, in the circle of his embrace.

Then, he ran a hand down her back to break the tightness of his hold on her. When he would have stepped away, she kept her hands clutched to him, then seemed to recollect who and where she was. She straightened, and looked at him with a slightly embarrassed expression on her beautiful, symmetrical face. “I’m sorry, Harrison. I don’t know why I came here.”

“Don’t you?” He asked quietly, his words darker than he’d intended. He turned from her and ran a hand through his hair, focussing on the map of the state as though he could find some kind of emotional salvation in the cartographic.

Madeline looked around for some tissues and saw a box in the corner of his desk. She crossed to it and lifted one out, so that she could gently pat the skin beneath her eyes.

“When did it happen?” Harrison asked, turning around to look at her.

Something strange throbbed inside of him, at the sight of Madeline trying so hard to return herself to her usual state of cool command. She was blinking furiously, to keep tears at bay, and the tissue was a crumpled mess. He made a soft noise of impatience and moved to stand in front of her, then lifted a thumb to chase one of her tears away. Her big blue eyes lifted to his face, and the strength of emotion he saw in them gave him the distinct impression he’d been hit by a hefty piece of timber.

“Just now. About an hour ago.”

A frown pulled at his lips. “How’s your mother?”

“Devastated.” She shook her head. Her words trembled with the burden of self-recriminations. “I couldn’t stay there. They were all so upset. Even KB seemed shocked to realise that Kenneth had actually died.”

“And you?”

She shook her head. “Numb. I just needed to see you.” Her laugh was weak and faint. “That’s crazy, right?”

“Where’s your husband?” The words hung between them like a thinly veiled accusation.