Harlequin Superromance September 2014 - Bundle 1 of 2: This Good Man\Promises Under the Peach Tree\Husband by Choice (60 page)

Her staying Thursday night had seemed a bit odd—and yet logical, too. There was no way he was going to send her out to find a hotel in Santa Raquel at midnight and it was even less acceptable to let her drive the three hours back to Las Sendas after spending the evening helping him try to track down Meri's ex-husband. The guy had spent some time as an undercover cop. If he didn't want to be found, finding him wasn't going to be easy.

Chantel was offering him professional expertise on her own time. Because it was what Jill would have wanted.

She'd also cooked dinner for him and Caleb, as Max had discovered when he'd come into the house through the garage, his son on his hip, expecting to find a cold and deserted house, and finding, instead, a casserole in the oven and a plain-clothed cop poring over pages of reports on the laptop computer she'd set up at his kitchen table.

Meri would never have put a computer on the dinner table.

Dining came before business—always. Family before business—always. But now the business was finding Meri.

Which was why, at ten o'clock Friday night, he and Chantel were still sitting at the kitchen table.

She'd used her password-protected account to search crime databases and found seven Steve Smiths in the Las Vegas area who'd been charged with counts of domestic violence during the years Meri would have lived there.

And was trying to connect any of them to the Steve Smith on Meri's Las Vegas marriage and divorce records.

There were one hundred and twenty Steve Smiths just in the North Las Vegas area.

“None of the seven charged Smiths match up,” she said as soon as he finally got Caleb asleep two hours past his bedtime.

It was the first they'd been able to speak freely since he'd arrived home. Caleb might not understand the significance of words, but he could very well remember them, and he wasn't going to risk his son being adversely affected. Caleb was already showing signs of anxiety, just having Meri gone, without a bunch of adult-type talk involving police searches confusing him further. It wasn't so much the words, Max knew, but the serious tone of their voices that would alarm him.

“Two are in jail. One is dead. Three are still married to their spouses and living and working in Las Vegas. And a seventh moved to Massachusetts and is remarried. None of them were cops. Do you have any idea how old Meri's ex is?”

“Six years older than she, which would make him thirty-eight.”

“None of these guys are thirty-eight.”

Then they weren't looking in the right place.

“Are you sure she pressed charges against him?”

Was he? He'd assumed she had. But had she actually said so? “She said that turning him in hadn't helped,” he said, trying to remember her exact words. It wasn't as though he and Meri sat around and discussed the abusive past that she was trying to leave behind.

She'd been through counseling. And said that her best course was just to move forward. If she ever hoped to have a normal life she had to move on from being a victim.

Or something like that. Those conversations had been more than four years ago. He'd taken away the pertinent facts and left the rest.

Chantel changed screens. Typed.

“I'm looking up restraining orders with any of
her
names on them.” He'd given her Meri's aliases the night before. “If she filed something we can make an educated guess that the man she filed it against is Steve.” Chantel's screen went blank before lists of green writing popped up. “I'm assuming she only had one abuser?”

“That's correct.” No doubt in his mind about that one. “And she did file a restraining order,” he said, remembering. “More than four years ago.” Steve Smith had been a curse in Meri's life. And a threat to his life with Meri from the very beginning.

One thing was certain, when they found the guy, he was going to pay.

Even if he wasn't immediately responsible for Meri's disappearance, and he hoped to God he wasn't, he was most definitely peripherally to blame. If not for Steve's years of abuse and later hunting her down like an animal, Meri wouldn't suffer from such paralyzing paranoia.

“I've got it.” Highlighting a record, Chantel opened it up. Clicked to bring up an official looking document. “It was filed almost five years ago and was granted for one year,” she said slowly, reading. He tried to see by leaning over from where he was sitting, but couldn't make out the fine print on the PDF form.

“Five years ago he was working as a P.I.”

He hadn't known that.

“Steve had written to her via the last shelter she'd been in, using her newest assumed name. The letter was the basis for the order....”

He was trying desperately to remember things he'd only wanted to forget.

“Private investigators have to be fingerprinted to get a license to practice in Nevada,” she said. “So I ran a search, matching the Steve Smith named on Meri's restraining order with a Steve Smith in the fingerprint database under the same address. It came up a positive match.”

“So he was a private investigator.” Not great news, but not the end of the world either. “I'm guessing Meri didn't think that was nearly as frightening or noteworthy as him having been a cop. It was his police connections that scared her. And he had to do something when he left the force.”

“Do you know why he left?”

“Meri was certain he left so he could pursue her exclusively.”

Frustrated at his lack of knowledge, Max waited while Chantel continued to type and read. Steve Smith had been a ghost in their lives—one who'd left a lot of fear.

“The restraining order was reinstated in California when she moved here. It's good for five years.”

He'd known it was good in California. He hadn't known about the reinstatement part.

“Steve was a detective with the Las Vegas police for ten years.”

“I told you he was a cop.”

Chantel continued to read whatever private database she had access to. “I didn't realize he was this decorated. The man would have contacts, Max. And there are a lot of loyal men on the force....”

He'd heard stories from Jill about how fellow officers overlooked claims of domestic violence against their own, understanding that a bit of aggression came with the territory.

Believing, too, that a man who risked his life every day to save others wouldn't cross the line and hit a member of his own family.

If there were allegations, the force recommended counseling. They watched over him. Made sure there were support facilities available to him and to the members of his family.

“He retired from the force without a blemish. I find it hard to believe this is the same man that would behave as Meredith told you he had.”

Chantel knew police work. She knew Jill. She didn't know Meri.

“Talking about Steve upset Meri,” he said with confidence while, inside, he was running scared as hell. “He hadn't been around since she left Arizona and I was certain he'd moved on. He didn't follow her to California. Either he got the message to leave her alone, met someone else and let Meri go, or was in jail. Didn't much matter which it was as long as he stayed out of our lives.

“I assumed Meri didn't know and didn't want to know what he was doing. I honestly didn't think he was still a threat, because of the order and because he'd gone so long without bothering her. In my mind, the problem wasn't so much his showing up again, as it was the effect his years of abuse had had on her. I tried to play down her past to help her move on.”

“Restraining orders are enforceable in all states. And she could have filed for one in California, had her hearing, without him ever having to attend. He would've known that.”

Chantel continued to scroll. And he needed her to understand.

“When I first met Meri she was always looking over her shoulder. Not afraid of her shadow so much as being in constant preparation for a hit from behind. It was as if she didn't think she was allowed to live a normal life and be happy.”

“Sounds like a woman used to keeping secrets.”

Her words seemed to be a direct threat to his marriage.

“I'm not saying that she'd betray your trust or anything, but that maybe keeping secrets had become a matter of survival to her.”

Chantel's big brown eyes were filled with compassion.

Max focused on his own computer, where he was searching social networks for Steve Smith. There were lots of them.

Lots of Steve Smiths. Ordinary-looking guys with ordinary families. And jobs.

“I'm just... I guess what I'm trying to say is that someone like this, someone who's had to hide to this extent...it's understandable that you might not know her as well as you thought you did. In terms of you being so certain that she wouldn't leave you.”

Chantel was talking about a woman she didn't know. Making her sound like someone he didn't know.

His job was to stay calm.

CHAPTER SEVEN

A
T
A
COMPUTER
in a private cubicle at the library in the main building of the Stand on Saturday, Jenna studied various domestic violence websites, reading about the abusive personality, fantasy bonds, dependent relationships. All things she knew about, but only from the victim perspective. She had to get into the mind-set, to imagine the feelings so deeply that she could predict reactions to stimulus. The goal was to figure out what stimulus to use on Steve to get the reaction she needed—him to choose to set her free.

She read statistics and psychological data. On victims. And abusers—who'd often been victims themselves. She read victims' stories. There was Emma, who'd left an unfaithful husband for a wonderful man, Robert, she'd met online, a man who was a friend to her for a couple of years before she finally divorced her cheating husband and moved in with him, only to end up bruised and broken a couple of years later.

There was Lottie, a teenager abused by her boyfriend. Belinda, who'd suffered abuse since childhood at the hands of her father. The list, the stories, went on and on.

She felt as if she knew each and every one of the women she read about, wanted to give each of them a hug and a promise of emotional support from now through eternity.

Jenna acknowledged the feeling, understood it as a consequence of identifying with them so completely. And she moved on.

She wasn't here to read about her sisters. She had to know everything she could find out about abusers. Not how to identify them. She knew those lists all too well—could remember the first sickening time she'd been on a website, reading a list, and finding Steve in every single characteristic she read.

But what made a man do what he did? She had to know how to get him where he hurt. To find the humanity in him and appeal to it somehow. Not verbally of course. That would just feed his sense of control—hearing her beg. Experience had taught her that during her first year of marriage.

She read for hours. Unaware of fatigue. Or hunger.

And then she found James.

His mother had died when he was two and he'd been raised by a paternal aunt who had no children of her own. And didn't want any. She resented her brother, a long-haul truck driver, leaving James with her, but took him in because it was her godly duty to do so.

She went to church on Sunday morning and Sunday night and Wednesday night and took him with her every single time. And for every sound he made that interrupted her spiritual oneness she would burn him with the tip of her cigarette when they got home. Not enough to blister, or leave scars. Just enough to remind him of the dangers of hell's fires.

The little boy did everything he could to please his aunt and when she took sick while he was in his teens, he kept her home, caring for her with patience and kindness until the day she died. Some thought he'd done so for the money he'd inherit when she was gone. But he'd known they were paupers. He'd cared for her himself because he'd known what kind of state facility she'd have ended up in if he hadn't kept her home.

She'd opened her home to him. It was his duty to keep her there. God—and his aunt—had taught him well.

Shortly after his aunt died, he met a girl who'd lost her family tragically young. They hit it off from the very beginning because they had in common that sense of not really belonging, of having been denied the core foundation of a stable home life. And they married as soon as she was out of high school.

He was good and patient and kind to his wife, understanding her tender heart. He just did not tolerate any actions from her of which he did not approve. He was boss of the house now. And with that responsibility came the right to make those in his home follow his rules. By whatever means.

He provided. So he got to rule. And sometimes ruling meant that you had to teach those in your care about the dangers of hell's fires.

He didn't burn anyone. Remembering the burn-related nightmares of his youth he would never do that. He just used his words, and later his hands, to save his wife from falling down the devil's hole.

He did so with God's blessing. Using scripture to manipulate and control. To instill fear. Using hard work and dedication to family as proof of his own good heart.

And...

“Are you okay, dear?” Jenna jumped in her seat at the sound of a voice just over her shoulder.

“Yes!” she said, quickly minimizing the screen. “I'm fine, why?” Still lost in the story she'd been reading, she wasn't sure if the sixtyish woman was the same one who'd been behind the desk when she came in, if she even worked there at all, or was a resident like herself.

“You were trembling so hard I could feel you,” she said, pointing to an adjoining cubicle perpendicular to the one at which she sat.

The woman had presumably been on a computer as well, and since the computers were reserved for residents, that would make her one.

“I'm sorry,” Jenna said now. “I guess I'm a little cold. They've got the air conditioner blowing pretty hard in here.”

It was. But she hadn't noticed that either, not until then.

“I'm Renee,” the woman said, nodding.

“I'm Jenna.”

“I know. I saw you at dinner last night. You hardly touched a thing.”

“I wasn't very hungry.”

“You also don't act like this is your first dance. You aren't looking lost, or trying to figure out the way things work.”

She shrugged.

“It's not mine, either.”

If the woman needed to talk, she'd listen. There were others milling around. A woman a few tables over, with an opened encyclopedia and a pad of paper and pen in front of her. Another sitting in an armchair reading a magazine. And someone else reading from a tablet. There were a couple of women huddled together across the room, too.

Women seeking solace through conversation with other women was part of the healing process.

“You've been here before?” she asked Renee, as the other woman pulled her chair around and sat down.

“A few years ago. I'd just put my husband of forty years, Gary, in the hospital with a shove that ended up paralyzing him.”

Renee couldn't have been more than a hundred pounds. “You hurt him?”

“The police said it was self-defense. So actually did Gary when he realized that he could lose me if he lied about it. He'd been about to throw me down the stairs. I shoved against him, purely a terrified reaction on my part, and it caught him off guard at just the right moment and he went down instead.”

It wasn't a story she'd heard before. She could only imagine the guilt mixed with fear and confusion that one would carry in such a situation. She'd gone through years where she'd believed Steve's anger was her fault. If she didn't nag as much, ask so many questions, if she didn't need so badly to be loved, if she hadn't pissed him off at just the wrong moment, if she'd been more understanding of the very real pressures of his dangerous job....

Renee shifted and it dawned on her that she wasn't meeting the woman on the “outside.” Renee was back in a shelter for abused women.

“You said your husband was paralyzed. Was it only temporary, then?”

“No.”

“But he hurt you again?” They were sisters, in a place where secrets were safe.

“No, he didn't. He went through counseling, and once he saw what he'd been, he was truly sorry. He met with his group every week, long after he'd completed the program, just to make sure he never slipped back. He said that since he hadn't seen the abusiveness in himself to begin with—you know the lies they tell you, they sometimes believe them, too—he wasn't going to take a chance on having that happen again. He really did love me....”

Renee's eyes filled with tears. And Jenna was at a loss. Hearing about an abuser who was also one's true love wasn't...something she'd ever been privy to before. Or even considered.

“But...you're here....”

“Gary died last year, just after Christmas. Our son, Brian, who'd gone through a divorce shortly before his father was hurt, had moved home to help me take care of Gary these last few years. He... It was hard for him, to see his father so helpless....”

Uh-oh. Jenna's heart lurched.

“...the counseling, he was all for it at first. I mean, he'd known the back of his father's hand a few dozen times himself. But later...he said the weekly meetings, they turned his dad into a wuss....”

Wanting to stop what was coming so Renee wouldn't have to relive something she shouldn't have had to endure the first time, Jenna held herself back with effort.

Renee wouldn't be talking to her if she didn't need to do so. And sometimes, worse than having to tell your story when you didn't want to, was having someone tell you to stop when you did. “Brian's ex-wife, at the time of the divorce, had claimed that he was too much like his father. Brian said she was crazy, that she was just trying to make his life miserable, to make him pay, because he couldn't put up with her lying anymore. He'd caught her with another man. We believed him at the time. I knew my son. He's the assistant pastor of our church....”

Renee stopped and her chin trembled. So did her lips. But her eyes didn't waver as she looked at Jenna and continued, as softly as before, “The first time he raised a hand to me, I died a bit inside.”

A mother shouldn't ever have to face such an atrocity. No woman should ever have to face abuse period, most particularly from a trusted loved one, but from your own child? From the human that you grew and bore and raised with unconditional love? Your own flesh and blood?

In the moment, Jenna felt incredibly lucky.

“You're here because Brian's been abusing you?”

“That's right. It's been... I've been here for six weeks, and really, I should be ready to go, but....”

“Are they pressuring you to move on?” Most places had to. With money constraints and regulations that didn't allow them to house residents long-term; shelters could only do so much.

“No! They don't do that here. Not unless you aren't trying to help yourself. But even then, they help find alternate housing. The Stand isn't funded principally with government money. There's some, but it's primarily funded by investments and private donations and a lot of the work is done by volunteers, so they aren't as tied to generic regulations as most places.”

“So you can stay until you're ready to go....”

She nodded. “I just... He's still a pastor at the church where he grew up. At the church where his father and I grew up. I'm just... I...” She glanced at Jenna's computer screen.

“I was standing behind you for a bit before I called attention to myself. I... You were shaking and seemed upset, but you were engrossed and I... The article you were reading... I...”

Understanding dawned. She'd been reading about the abuser who used religion to keep his victim under his control. “You want to help your son.”

With tears in her eyes, Renee nodded.

“You realize you can't help him if he's not willing to help himself.”

“Are you telling yourself the same thing?”

“I'm... My situation is different.” She couldn't let the other woman assume...she couldn't be responsible for setting an erroneous example. She was willing to die in this quest. She couldn't be responsible for another woman doing so. “I'm not trying to help anyone else.” The words finally came to her. “I'm trying to help myself by gaining an understanding of...the other side.”

Renee studied her for a long minute. And then, standing, she nodded.

“Please.” Jenna reached out to her and was surprised when Renee took hold of her hand. “I'll... We can study together, if you like. We can learn together. I just...promise me one thing....”

“What's that?”

“That you won't put yourself in a position that will allow your son to hurt you again.”

“I can promise you that I won't have false hopes where he, or my ability to help him, is concerned. But he's my only child, Jenna. I can't promise never to be alone with him again.”

It wasn't what she'd asked. But she understood that it was all the other woman could give.

And that made it enough.

For now.