Nightingale Way: An Eternity Springs Novel (33 page)

“Lauren was stillborn.”

“I’m sorry. Of course. I’m proud that once you recovered from losing your child, you took control and found purpose and focus in your work and charitable activities.
I admit I’ve been disappointed that you haven’t found someone else to love. I want you to be happy, Cathy. Believe it or not, that’s what I’ve always wanted for you.”

Inexplicably, Cat found her eyes filling with tears. This wouldn’t do. Dipping her head to concentrate on getting the black dog’s tail positioned just right on her Wild, Wild West theme page, she willed them away. Once she’d managed to find control again, she asked another question that plagued her. “Why send Jack when I was in trouble? Surely there was someone else you could have trusted to help protect me.”

This time the answer was a little longer in coming. “It was my judgment that the two of you had unfinished business that prevented both of you from taking the next step. I thought this situation provided the perfect opportunity for you to deal with those issues.”

“Kill two crises with one kidnapping.”

Melinda laughed, and Cat started at the unusual sound. “That’s a fair way of looking at it, I guess.”

“The way he’s talked, Jack hasn’t been working for you for some time. Not directly, anyway?”

Melinda gave Cat a considering look. Ordinarily, she’d never respond to such a question, and Cat honestly didn’t expect her to do so now, but again her mother surprised her. “He transferred out of my department and into a section where his talents are utilized in more physically challenging situations.”

Cat’s stomach took a little roll. “Dangerous situations.”

“Well, yes.”

“Have you heard from him? Is he in danger now?”

“I am not being kept apprised of the situation, but I did request to be notified should he run into trouble. This trip isn’t as dangerous as it is arduous. Jack keeps himself in good shape, but frankly, the job he’s been
doing is better suited to a younger man. He needs to leave that job.” Melinda set down her glue gun and looked Cat straight in the eyes. “That’s why I offered him mine.”

Confused, Cat lowered her hands to her lap. “
Your
job?”

“I have put in for my retirement.”

Retirement? She’s actually retiring? Maybe she really is dying
.

“Jack’s transfer and promotion have been approved.”

His promotion to her mother’s job. Jack was taking her mother’s job? It finally got through to her, and Cat’s heart twisted as a dream she hadn’t admitted to nursing died. “When did he apply for it?”

“He didn’t apply. I recommended him.”

Of course you did
. Cat closed her eyes. Of course Melinda recommended Jack for her all-consuming job. He was the perfect person for it, right? She’d known that for more than fifteen years.

Cat couldn’t keep the bitterness from her voice as she said, “So you thought
I
was the unfinished business he needed to deal with before taking your job?”

Melinda obviously chose her words carefully. “Jack needed to stop running from you, one way or the other.”

“He’s not running from me,” Cat snapped, her temper flaring. “He’s been sleeping with me!”

A glint of emotion flashed across her mother’s face so quickly that Cat wasn’t sure she actually saw what she thought she’d seen. It almost looked like … satisfaction.

Surely she was mistaken.

“When did he accept it?”

“He hasn’t yet. Apparently, he needed time to think about it.”

Cat’s chin came up. “What if he says no? That could happen, you know. What if he turns it down?”

Melinda flipped the photo album page back to Cat’s wedding photograph. “I don’t know. Yes, he could refuse the job, though that wouldn’t be in his own best interests at all. I imagine in that case, he’ll stay in the job he’s in now, doing what he does now, for as long as possible. Of course, he could quit the service entirely. He doesn’t work because he needs to financially, of course. Jack does the job because he wants to. He needs to emotionally. He’s spent his whole adult life honing his skills to do it to perfection.” Doubt permeated her tone as she added, “Perhaps he could find another occupation that he would find just as fulfilling.”

Cat stifled the sudden urge to stick out her tongue at her mother, let out a sigh instead, and reached for her scissors. She would finish up this page, then find something else … anything else … to do. Maybe she’d give Fred a bath. He’d had a playdate with Cam’s devil dog yesterday and he’d smelled funky ever since. She didn’t know what those two had gotten into, and she didn’t think she wanted to know.

“I’ll be honest, Cathy. I didn’t support your marriage to Jack because I didn’t want you to have the kind of life your father has had. I wasn’t blind to the worry and the fear and the stress—it was hard for me and your father and obviously for you, too. But while your father has the personality to be an agent’s spouse, you didn’t when you started seeing Jack, and in my opinion, you still don’t.”

“So it’s all my fault.” As always.

“I’m not saying that at all. Fault has nothing to do with it. You are who you are, Cathy. You are a wonderful, kind, caring human being and I’m so proud of the woman you’ve become. The reality is that life as Jack’s wife isn’t right for you—not as long as he does the work he does. If you must place blame, Jack’s shoulders are a good fit. After all, he could have changed jobs when you
two married, or before you divorced. He could have quit to be here for his cousin’s wedding rather than go to Manila. He didn’t. You need to ask yourself why that is. Believe me, I’ve asked the question.”

Melinda laced her fingers and leaned forward. “Believe this or not, Cat, but there is nothing I want more than to see you happy. I love you. And I love Jack, too. I want him to be happy, too. I just have my doubts that the two of you can make each other happy in the long run. However, you are both adults and you have to make your own decisions. It’s not my place to interfere in your private lives.”

“But you always did. You were my husband’s boss, his mentor. That interfered.”

“Well, that won’t be the case now, will it? I’ll be retired. Oh, look at this.” Melinda pulled another picture from the box and turned it toward Cat. “This was your first bicycle. Do you remember it?”

With that, the topic of Jack and his job was left behind as Cat suffered through another fifteen minutes of family photographs before Celeste returned and she managed to make her escape. As she made her way downstairs and out of the house, her thoughts bounced around like a pinball. Her mom had kept a family photo album at her office. She’d offered Jack her job. Melinda was retiring. What about Dad? Did he intend to keep teaching? Mom had offered Jack her job. Maybe her parents would do something even stranger than taking an extended visit to Eternity Springs, like move to Florida.

Mom had offered Jack her job.

And what had he said to Cat almost immediately afterward?
I love you, Cat. When I come back, we’re gonna talk about diving into the deep end, talk about strings and knots and for better or worse
.

Strings and knots, for better or worse.

She wanted to cry.

Instead, she stopped by the supply building, secured buckets and an old towel, and headed for Nightingale Cottage. There, she filled both buckets with warm water and carried them outside to the fenced yard behind her cabin where Fred lay lounging in the sun. At her approach, he bound to his feet, his tail wagging hard, his tongue extended and ready to lick.

Cat expected to get soaked, but Fred turned out to be one of those rare dogs who love getting a bath. Cat didn’t consciously think as she sudsed him up, rinsed him off, and patted him dry, but once the task was complete and he happily scampered toward Angel Creek to shake and chase his tail, she realized that somewhere along the way, she’d come to a conclusion.

She loved Jack Davenport. She’d never stopped loving Jack Davenport. And Jack Davenport loved her.

“He’s going to turn the job down,” she said to Fred, knowing in her bones that she was right.

At the same time, she knew in her bones that her mother was right, too. Jack had been born to do the job he’d been offered, maybe not on the day his mother gave birth to him, but surely on the day when she lost her life in the fire that spared him, leaving him to the guidance of the guardian who had brought him to Melinda Blackburn’s attention. He saved lives. He made lives better. He truly was a hero.

Either way, she would make him miserable.

If he took the job, misery was inevitable. Oh, she could try to change. She
would
try to change—just as she’d tried to change when she married him the first time. She’d tried so hard to accept his job, to support his work, to be the wife a hero deserved, but it hadn’t worked. They’d loved each other then, too. They’d made each other miserable, even before Lauren died.

And if he quit his job? Then what? How long would it be before he missed the life? How long before he resented
her? A month? A year? It was bound to happen at some point. Jack Davenport was born for the job. And would she take that away from him? Could she take it away from him and still live with herself?

Cat looked back at the window of Nightingale Cottage where, out of sentimentality and silliness, she’d placed the electric candle that she’d purchased from the Christmas section of the Angel’s Rest gift shop.
Now, leave a candle burning in the window for me, would you?

She thought of the hours they’d shared at Nightingale Cottage. She thought of the time they’d spent together at Eagle’s Way. She thought of their life together in Washington. Loving him was easy. Living with him was … another story.

Jack Davenport was the Eagle. Eagles weren’t meant for strings and knots and tethers to the ground or white picket fences.

“I have to set him free.”

Cam Murphy woke on his wedding day to the ringing of the telephone. He bolted upright in bed and stared at the land line as if it were a moray eel. “She’s calling to call it off.”

Brring. Brring. Brring
.

“Dad, answer the phone!” his son, Devin, yelled from his room across the hall.

“I can’t. What if it’s Sarah calling to call off the wedding?”

“Dad, you are so lame.”

He was lame. Sarah loved him. She wasn’t calling off the wedding. However, she could be calling to tell him that she’d decided they needed yellow satin bows on the ends of the pews instead of white. Thank God he was marrying for life, because this wedding nonsense was driving him crazy. But after all she’d had to go through all these years by herself, he owed it to her to do what he could to make her day perfect.

Just as he reached for the phone, it stopped ringing.

Cam thought his heart might have stopped beating. What if Sarah had called to call off the wedding?

“Dad. Pick up. It’s Jack.”

“Thank God.” He grabbed the receiver from the cradle. “You better be home!”

Static crackled and told him the answer before his
cousin spoke. “I’m still in the air. Should be able to make it in time, but I’ll probably need to come straight to the church. I’m arranging for someone to meet my jet with a tux, but I need to know which vest Sarah finally decided on.”

“Last I heard it was silver, but it could be animal print by now.”

“Going that well, is it?”

“Let’s just say I’ll be really glad when it’s over. She wants you and Devin in the silver.”

“Okay. Look, Cam, I thought I should give you a heads-up, since Sarah is so particular about her photos. I’m looking a little ragged. It won’t hurt my feelings if she wants me to—”

“You okay, cuz?” Cam interrupted.

“Yes. Let’s just say I’ll add a little color to the photos that I don’t think your bride is counting on.”

Cam didn’t hesitate. “Look, Sarah talks a big game, but what she really wants … what we both want … is you there with us when we say out wedding vows in—” he glanced at the clock “—six hours.”

Oh, wow. Six hours.

“I’m doing my best.” Static crackled. “How is Cat?”

Cam scratched his bare chest and considered his response before finally saying, “She’s worried about you. Have you called her?”

“She didn’t answer her phone.”

“Yeah, well, she left it in reach of the Boston Terrorist,” he said, referring to his dog, who had an eating disorder—Mortimer ate everything. “It’s history.”

As if he knew he was the topic of conversation, Mortimer lifted his head from where he slept at the foot of Cam’s bed.

“Oh. Okay.”

Jack sounded relieved and Cam would have felt guilty, only it was his wedding day. When he hung up the phone
a couple of minutes later, he spied his son standing on the threshold, his arms crossed, a disapproving frown on his face. “You lied to your best man?”

“Co–best man,” Cam automatically replied. “Damn straight I’m going to lie. He can’t do anything from cruise altitude, so what’s the point in telling him. I don’t want anything interfering with Sarah’s dream day.”

Devin scratched his stubbled jaw thoughtfully. “Makes sense. So, old man, you gonna lie around in the fart sack all day, or you gonna haul your butt out of bed and make me some breakfast?”