Broken Angels (8 page)

Those words had bounced inside Rebecca’s head all evening. Like nervous grasshoppers, they whizzed through her, stopping only long enough to tie knots in every organ they encountered along the way.

What had he meant by that?

She’d never gotten a chance to ask him. Will had chosen that moment to start fussing, and Zach had rushed off, leaving her with nothing but unvoiced questions and a funny feeling festering in the pit of her stomach.

Now, hours later, as she changed into her pajamas and prepared for bed, she still couldn’t quell the jittery excitement his statement had elicited. She’d always believed he’d walked away from their marriage without as much as a backward glance. While she’d been busy trying to reassemble the broken pieces of her heart, he’d gone on with his life with the same cool self-possession for which he was renowned. While she’d lain in bed at night, her eyes painfully dry, her cheeks stinging from all the tears she’d shed, she’d imagined him with some other woman. One who could give him everything he wanted, be everything he needed.

Not once since the breakup had he called or dropped by for a visit, so she’d naturally assumed he’d been glad to wash his hands of her. Even the divorce had been handled through a lawyer Liam had recommended, with as little personal contact as possible.

She applied her face cream, checking—as she always did—for the telltale sign of wrinkles. She was only thirty-four, young by anyone’s standard, but she still couldn’t help but feel time evaporating around her. Her youth was slipping away, gently, imperceptibly. One day she’d look in the mirror at a face she barely recognized and ask herself what she’d accomplished. Her failures would snarl at her with vivid clarity—no husband, no children, just loneliness and a gaping emptiness that simply couldn’t be filled.

It seemed unfair that Lindsay—who had everything to live for—no longer existed, while Rebecca continued to forge ahead, building nothing. Nothing that lasted.

Maybe this was her chance to change that.

The stuffed animal she’d sewn sat on the nightstand, staring at her with bulging eyes. She went to it, gathered it in her arms and cradled it as if it were a baby. Maybe if she practiced, one of these days she’d be able to hold Will, hug Kristen or take Noah’s hand in hers without experiencing that plummeting sensation in her abdomen.

With a sigh, she wandered into the darkened corridor and walked to Kristen’s room. Across the hall, Will’s door stood closed. From behind the thick wooden divider Zach’s presence called to her, connected with that secret corner of her being that was still intimately aware of his every move, his every breath.

Who says I moved on?

Warmth inundated her, made her pulse trip and her heart crash.

She shook her head at her stupidity and swallowed a snort. Decisively, she pushed open Kristen’s door and entered. A nightlight cast a thin, shivering glow through the room. The curtains were parted and moon-silvered shadows danced on the walls. Beyond the glass, winking stars salted the black cloak of night.

Rebecca approached the bed, where the girl lay in a tangle of sheets, her hair draped over her forehead like fallen straw. She looked serene, almost angelic.

Peace was infectious, hypnotic. It made you want to believe it would last forever. But it couldn’t. Reality wouldn’t allow it. Even now it hovered in the air, as pervasive as it was invisible, waiting to awaken with the sun.

In her arms the girl clutched something white. At first Rebecca thought it was a blanket. Upon closer inspection, however, she realized it was a sweater. She recognized it because she’d given it to Lindsay for her twenty-eighth birthday, a short six years ago. She’d picked it for its warmth and softness. No wonder Kristen favored it. It didn’t hurt that the garment probably still carried the scent of her mom’s perfume.

Rebecca reached out, assailed by the sudden urge to brush Kristen’s hair from her face, to stroke her dimpled cheek. Instead, she placed the stuffed animal at her side.

“Sweet dreams,” she whispered.

Then, with a last lingering glance at the girl’s dozing face, she left the softly lit room and slipped into the waiting embrace of night, where regrets dimmed and her failures didn’t clang quite so loudly.

Something boomed. A shrill cacophony that slithered into her consciousness and yanked her from a dreamless sleep. Rebecca moaned and covered her head with a pillow, but nothing short of deafness could block out the racket pummeling her brain like a jackhammer. What was all the commotion?

She crawled out of bed and dragged herself to the door, half expecting to find the house on fire. Maybe Zach had decided to cook again. He was adept at many things, but cooking wasn’t one of them. Once, on their anniversary, he’d decided to bring her hash browns and scrambled eggs in bed. She had a sneaking suspicion that he’d unwittingly broken the yolks and tried to cover his blunder by insisting he’d intended to scramble them all along. Whatever the case, he’d forgotten to turn off the burner, while failing to remove the oily pan from the stove. When they’d come down quite some time later—she blushed recalling the heated love they’d made on that rain-swept morning so many years ago—the pungent smell of hot oil had burned their nostrils.

Instantly, the neglected pan had ignited in a burst of orange flames. Zach, always ready to take charge of a situation, had rushed in and attempted to extinguish the blaze with a glass of water. Big mistake. He’d nearly incinerated his eyebrows.

It hadn’t been funny at the time, but now the memory made Rebecca’s lips quirk with amusement. She’d never loved him more than she had at that moment, when complete ineptness had afflicted him and left him cursing.

She grabbed the baby-blue robe she’d left on the dresser by the door and ventured outside. No inferno raged. No flames crackled and roared with deadly intent, yet the house still simmered with a furious undercurrent of energy. Noah and Kristen whizzed past her, howling like injured wolves. For a second she wondered if they were in pain, then realized they were only playing.

From his room, Will hollered.

Blinking to chase the cobwebs of sleep from her eyes, she hurried to see what all the fuss was about. The door to Will’s bedroom was open, so she stole a glimpse inside. The sight she beheld made a smile spread through her. Zach was on the floor, wrestling with Will. He clutched a diaper in one hand while struggling to pin the baby down with the other. Will kicked, screamed and writhed. Tiny feet and fists flailed.

“Sit still, you little rug rat,” he muttered between oaths.

Again, Rebecca had a vision of him tossing a glass of water onto a flaming pan. There were many kinds of fire, and this was definitely one of them.

She edged into the room. “Need some help?” she offered.

He started at the sound of her voice. His gaze rose to her face, then glided over her in a slow sweep that made a rush of self-consciousness roll through her. She knew exactly how she looked in the morning. Her hair was a wild tangle of untamed curls that brought to mind clumps of Spanish moss. Her skin was pale without the benefit of blush, her eyes slightly swollen and misted by sleep.

“No one ever told me that dressing a kid was more exhausting than an Olympic marathon,” he grumbled. “I’d take a five-thousand-meter run any day over this.”

He tried to slide the diaper under the baby, but Will kicked it away. “First he pulled the melt on me,” he explained. “Now he’s doing the jiggle.”

“The jiggle?”

“Stick around long enough and you’ll know what I’m talking about.” Will managed to wriggle free from Zach’s grasp. Not bothering to waste time trying to stand, he made a dash for the door on all fours, zipping across the room with the speed of a jackrabbit. Rebecca never would have believed anyone could crawl that fast.

“Don’t let him escape,” Zach yelled.

She hastened into the room and shut the door behind her. Zach ran and scooped up the baby, then placed him back in the crib. Will let out a whoop of indignation so loud, it made her ears ring.

“Come here and hold him down for me,” he said.

She did as he asked, grabbing the baby’s legs as Zach struggled to attach the diaper. The kid was surprisingly strong for one so small. She was barely able to keep him still long enough for Zach to dress him. Like a contortionist drenched in Vaseline, he turned onto his stomach and slid out of her grip.

Her eyes rounded with surprise, but Zach just smiled knowingly. “The jiggle,” he said.

“At least you got the diaper on him.” Relieved, she took a step away from the crib and inched toward the door.

“Not so fast.” Zach walked to the dresser and pulled a pair of shorts and a T-shirt from the drawers. He flashed an unsettling grin that made dread congeal in her veins. “We’re not done yet. Not even close.”

The morning went a little smoother than usual, maybe because Becca was here. Noah and Kristen were behaving surprisingly well, playing as if they were the best of friends. Even Will refrained from practicing his falsetto. Overall, life was good.

Zach looked across the kitchen table at Becca, who nibbled on a piece of toast as if taking a real bite would cause her to balloon on the spot. She’d always been overly concerned with her weight, even though she had the most incredible figure he’d ever seen. True, she wasn’t on the skinny side. Her hips were wide and round, her breasts full. In today’s society, where anorexic runway models ruled, women like Becca were made to feel self-conscious about their bodies, which was a damn shame. To Zach she was the ideal woman, firm and voluptuous, curved in all the right places.

“What’s the plan for today?” she asked between bites.

“Divide and conquer.”

She aimed a confused stare his way.

“A great strategy in both war and parenting,” he explained. “Together, they’ll wipe us out. Split them up and we actually stand a chance.”

“Okay, commando, so what do you suggest?” Her tousled hair fell in a silken cascade over her forehead.

He’d always loved the way she looked in the morning, fresh and soft with just a hint of wildness. Long-forgotten cravings swam to the surface, made him acutely aware of her every gesture, her every sigh and sound. The way she smacked her lips together, wetting them with the tip of her pink tongue. The way she brushed the piece of toast against her mouth right before she took a bite. The soft whisper of fabric scraping her skin as she bent forward and reached for her coffee mug. Her pale blue satin robe parted, exposing the smooth swell of her breast.

Need pummeled him with iron fists. It took all his self-control not to glide his hand beneath her tank top and explore the tempting curve of her creamy white skin. He knew just how she’d feel in his palm, soft and supple and hot enough to scorch his flesh. He could all too easily imagine her eyes growing smoky as her nipple puckered beneath his thumb…

All the more reason to divide and conquer. He couldn’t bear to spend another minute in this house with her.

“For starters, you can take Kristen to ballet class.” His voice sounded gruff, roughened by desire. Thankfully, she didn’t catch the change in him.

“I didn’t know she attended ballet.” She lifted her coffee mug and took a sip. The warm liquid glazed her lips, made them glisten in the sunlight.

Zach pried his gaze away from her mouth. “Every Saturday at ten. Lindsay insists—insisted—that her daughter inherited her talent for dance.”

When she was a kid, Lindsay had always spun around the house, usually dressed in a silly tutu that had made him snicker and roll his eyes. The going joke was that she’d been born with a pair of ballet slippers on her feet. For a while he’d almost believed it. He wasn’t sure Kristen was as gifted a dancer, but Lindsay had somehow convinced herself that she was.

“Ten?” She shot a glance at her watch, and a frantic expression dashed across her face. “It’s almost nine. I haven’t even showered yet.”

“Then you better get a move on.”

She inhaled the rest of her toast, forced it down with a couple of mouthfuls of coffee, then bolted to her feet. Within seconds she was sprinting up the stairs.

A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.

Welcome to the land of parenthood.

He wondered how the reality of it measured up to the fantasy she’d always harbored. To Becca, being a parent had always meant long strolls through the park, shared laughter and games, cozy hugs and kisses. She’d never anticipated sleepless nights, an endless battle of wills and nerve-shattering noise levels that set your teeth on edge.

If these last two weeks had taught him anything, it was that she was in for a rude awakening. One that was long overdue.

The Movement and Dance Studio was located in a beautifully renovated building on Harvard Street in Brookline, a short ten-minute drive away. Ms. Orloff, the owner and dance instructor, had once trained with the Russian ballet. She was a tall, lithe woman, with soft, fluid movements and the kind of innate grace that made goose bumps spring from one’s pores. She glided across the shiny hardwood floor as if on invisible skates, perfectly in tune with her body and the world around her.

Rebecca envied her. From the time she was old enough to walk, she’d longed for grace, composure and the kind of self-assurance that had always come so naturally to Zach and Lindsay. When Lindsay had been performing in dance recitals and Zach had been awarded medal after medal, Rebecca had sat in the shadows, silently cheering them on. She’d been so proud of them both, even as she’d secretly ached for something of her own—a talent, a passion, a smidgen of success.

She’d been the geek through and through. Sure, she’d aced all her tests and won the best short story award in high school, but athletically speaking, she’d been a nobody—the last kid ever picked in gym class, the invisible one, the one no one ever bothered to acknowledge with a pass or a pat on the back.

At seventeen she’d decided to change that. She’d joined a gym, had pushed herself to work out even as her muscles screamed in protest. After a year of training, her body had grown firm and supple, strong and defined. She’d been so pleased with the results that she’d never stopped working out. Even now she tried to go to the gym at least twice a week.