Not the Marrying Kind (Destiny Bay Romances - Forever Yours) (17 page)

Robin frowned. “I don't think he'll let you,” she said flatly.

Shelley stopped in front of the mirror.
Oh, what can ail you, sad, sad lady,
she thought to herself in a paraphrase of the Keats poem. That's what she looked like. Alone and palely loitering. A vagabond on a darkling plain. “He's not here,” she said softly, and her voice sounded far away. “He left for a business appointment. I'm going to be gone by the time he comes back.”

“Oh, no, you're not.” Robin jumped off the bed and barred the door to the hallway, her arms dramatically outstretched. “No way! I won't let you throw away—”

“Robin!” Suddenly Shelley was furious, not at her friend so much, but at fate, the world, everything that seemed to be conspiring to make her miserable. “It's not up to you. It's my life.” She glared at Robin, eyes blazing. “Did I interfere when Jim left for Peru and you wouldn't go with him? Did I tell you what a mistake I thought you were making? No. I left it up to you to handle your own life. Please have the courtesy to allow me the same freedom.”

Robin seemed to crumple before her eyes, and remorse shot through Shelley. She leaped forward and threw her arms around her friend. “Oh, Robin, I'm so sorry. I shouldn't have brought your marriage into this. It's not fair.”

“No.” Robin gently disentangled herself from Shelley's embrace and walked unsteadily toward the balcony. The breeze from the open doorway ruffled her shiny brown hair. “No, you were right. I can't make you do what I think you ought to, any more than you can make me.” Her sigh was long and painful. “And now that it's out in the open, how about leveling with me? What do you think about the mess I've made of my life?”

“Robin, this is hardly the time or the place—”

“Please, Shelley.” She turned and looked into her friend's face. “Was it so wrong what I did? Isn't marriage supposed to be a fifty-fifty proposition? Shouldn't he have met me halfway?”

Shelley hesitated. She felt like she was the last person in the world to be giving others advice right now. It wasn't as if she were doing such a wonderful job of her own relationship.

“That's the ideal situation, but not many people achieve it,” she told Robin at last. “You can't expect to go half and half on everything anyway. A marriage, or any other relationship, is the sum of all its parts. One partner may have to go three quarters of the way, or maybe even ninety percent now and then. You can't balance and weigh everything that way. It just doesn't work.”

“So you think I should have given in to him. I should have gone to Peru.”
 

Shelley took a deep breath. “I'm not saying that. Only you can say what your marriage was worth to you. I can't.” She closed her eyes, “But when you love someone, really love them, you should be able to go the extra distance,” she said softly, more to herself than to Robin. “It all depends on what you can bear to do. Sometimes you have to stretch yourself.”

How far could she stretch
, Shelley asked herself.
How far could Michael
? They'd have to be a pair of contortionists to make anything work between the two of them? No, it was impossible.

Robin began to pace the floor of the hotel room. Suddenly she chuckled, though the sound was harsh.
 

“Do you know one of the reasons I was so hot on coming here to this resort? I thought I might meet a man who would wipe Jim out of my mind.” She laughed a humorless gurgle and walked out onto the balcony. “That's what I wanted to do—to prove to myself that there were more where Jim came from, that I could always find a man.”

When Shelley came out beside her, she saw the tears slowly sliding down her friend's tanned cheeks, and silently she put an arm around her shoulders and drew her near.

“I found men all right. Tons of them. Of every size and shape and personality.” A sob broke her sentence. “But not one of them was Jim. He's the
only man I’ll ever love. I know that now. And I've let
him slip away.”

“It's not too late.”

“It is. I was so angry that he would take that job in Peru without consulting me, I told him I wouldn't go with him. We both put up the barricades, fighting about it every day. And then, suddenly, he was gone. And I was so—so alone.”
 
Her voice broke on the word.

“Robin, I'm sure he still loves you.”

“I'm not so sure. The last letter I got asked if I'd filed for divorce yet. That was all. Not even 'How are you, do you miss me?' “

“He's still hurt.”

Robin turned and hugged Shelley hard. “So am I,” she said, sobbing, her voice muffled by tears and Shelley's shoulder.

“Let's get out of here,” Shelley said. “I think we both need to go home.”

Robin nodded. “I’ll start packing.”

“And I'll write a letter to Michael.” She smiled at Robin's tear-stained face. “We’ll go home and have a real talk, okay? And we'll figure out a way to show Jim how sorry you are about what happened.”

Robin gave her a wavery smile. “Sure. Why not? Miracles have happened before.”

Miracles, Shelley thought as she hurried back to Michael's room to collect her things. Maybe that was what she needed. But didn't they only happen to angels?

Too bad old girl
, she told herself.
Looks like you're out of luck
.

CHAPTER EIGHT:
 

Men Like Michael
 

“The purpose of Assertiveness Training is to teach you to take charge of your life. To do this you must be able to set your own goals
and
map ways of working toward them.” That was what the book said.

“Fine.” Shelley slapped the book down on her desk after reading the paragraph over eleven times. “That's exactly what I'll do.”

She took out a blank sheet of paper and began writing.

Goal 1. Forget about Michael Hudson.
 

Goal 2. Focus on your work.
 

Goal 3. Divorce emotions from your professional life.

She bit the end of her pencil. It was no use. She wasn't going to be able to do any of those things until she found out what had happened to Michael that day in Newport.

She and Robin had left in a hurry. She'd scribbled out a letter to Michael, full of poorly thought out arguments against seeing him again—things like “The cliche that opposites attract has always been a fallacy” and “You spend your days seeking physical danger while I spend mine trying to alleviate the emotional danger in people's lives—you walk the razor's edge by choice, I try to pull people like you back from the brink” and ending with “Please don't try to contact me in any way.”

And he hadn't. If she looked down into her heart of hearts, she had to admit that had surprised her, and maybe even hurt her a little. Not one letter, one visit, one phone call. He might have disappeared off the face of the earth for all she knew.

So you see
, she scolded herself often,
what you did was exactly right. He didn't really care a thing about you. You were a fun challenge for a slow day in Newport. Other than that, you were certainly expendable.

But in the back of her mind one question kept nagging at her: What happened when he confronted Harry Stickler? Had there been shots fired? Had he been hit?

Four days had passed since the weekend. Michael hadn't kept his weekly appointment with Jeff. So where was he? What had happened?

She tried to ignore the questions.
 
She did a lot of shopping.
 
She tried to read a book. And she called her cousin Tag to see about meeting his sister Missy for lunch, just as she’d suggested, to see if she could get a handle on what might be the problem.
 

“Meet me at Mickey’s on the Bay,” she suggested to Tag when she called him.
 

There was an awkward pause.
 

“No can do,” he said at last.
 
“I’m persona non grata there at the moment.”

“What?”
 
That seemed odd.
 
“Why?
 
What happened?”

He sighed as though he didn’t relish getting into it.
 
“You do know that Mickey is getting married, don’t you?”

She blinked.
 
Did she know that?
 
Someone had said something about it but she’d discounted it after having seen how Tag and Mickey felt about each other a few weeks before.
 

“His name is Robert Harding,” Tag said.
 
“He’s a banker.
 
Finance guy.
 
Rich.”

“But… .”

“Yeah, I know,” he said, his voice slightly bitter.
 
“Does she love him?
 
No.
 
But he can take care of her.
 
And…and Meggie.”
 
He fell silent.
 

“I see,” Shelley said, feeling the sadness he was hinting at.
 
“And you?”

“Me?”
 
He sounded angry.
 
“It has nothing to do with me.
 
I can’t marry anybody.”
 
He swore softly as though he hadn’t meant to say those words or put them in quite that order.
 
“What I mean is, she has to do what will make her safe and make her happy.
 
You know what I mean?
 
And…and if Robert is that safe harbor she needs, so be it.”

“And you?” she asked again, softly.
 

“Me?
 
I’ve been told to stay away from the café.
 
And I guess that’s only fair.”
 
His voice thickened for a moment.
 
“So I’m out of here.
 
I’m going down the coast, or maybe to the islands.”

She could sense the pain in his voice and she closed her eyes.
 
It was pretty obvious someone—maybe Robert himself—had told him to stay away from Mickey.
 

“Listen, we’ll talk when I get back, okay?”

“Okay Tag.
 
You take care.”

“Sure.
 
Don’t I always?”

He rang off and she stared at the cell phone in her hand for a moment.
 
Poor Tag.
 
Maybe it was all his own fault, but he was letting the woman he loved slip away.
 
She only wished she could do something to help.
 

Everyone’s life seemed to have a tragedy lurking in the shadows.
 
Hers was Michael.
 
And what was she prepared to do about it?

Assertiveness training be damned, she had to find out how he was and what had happened! When she finally admitted that to herself, adrenaline flooded her body, and she jumped into action, dialing the number on the form he'd filled out in Jeff's office.

“The number you have dialed has been disconnected,” the robotlike tone of the recording informed her.

So much for the direct approach. There was still the office he worked for. She looked up the number of the district attorney's office and rang it.
 

“Michael Hudson?” the receptionist asked. “I have no listing for that name.”

Of course not. Undercover operators had unlisted numbers. Now what? Shelley stared at the Mary Cassatt print for a long time before she could make herself take the next step. Then she pulled on a jacket and ran out into the parking lot and got into her car for the drive to the station house.

It wasn't long before she was standing at the door to Detective Sam Gladstone's office. “Detective Gladstone? May I speak with you for a moment?”

He leaned back in his chair, his long, lean body alert. She could see that he didn't quite recognize her at first, but by the time he'd nodded his acquiescence, the memories had been stirred to life.

“Dr. Carrington, isn't it?”

“I'm not a doctor yet,” she said automatically, coming in slowly to stand before his desk.

“Sit down.” He rose and offered her a chair. “What can I do for you?”

She dropped into the chair and smiled nervously. Just what could he do for her? Shelley wondered. That was the hard part. How was she going to get through this without looking like an idiot?

“Detective, we met a few weeks ago under unusual circumstances. ...”

His dark face almost smiled. “Not so unusual for me,” he reminded her.

“Oh, no, of course not.” She slid forward on her chair. “But it was for me. I was a witness against a Michael Hudson. You seemed to know him fairly well.”

He nodded solemnly. He wasn't about to make this any easier. She was going to have to go all the way on her own.

“I ... I wonder if you could give me some information about Mr. Hudson. Have you seen him lately? In the last few days?”

His gaunt face showed no hint of what he was thinking. “I'm sorry, Ms. Carrington, Michael Hudson has no official connection to the police department. There's nothing I can tell you about him.”

“Can you just tell me if you've seen him since the weekend?”

He shook his head. “I'm sorry.”

Did that mean
Yes, but I can't tell you about it; or No, I haven't seen him; or Yes, I've seen him and he was in horrible shape
. Who knew what the man was saying! He wasn't about to give away a thing.

She rose from her seat, anger alternating with regret. “I don't suppose you could give me any idea where I might go to look for him?”

He'd think she was “mad about the boy,” wouldn't he? That she had a crush on him and wanted to look him up. Well, he wouldn't be far off at that. And who cared what he thought anyway?

“I'm sorry,” he said again.

She turned to leave, but at the doorway of his office, she paused. This was her last hope. If he wouldn't help her, the only thing left to do was wander the streets and hope to run into Michael by accident somewhere. Pretty bad odds there. She turned back, determined. If she had to tell him everything in order to find out about Michael, she'd do it.

“Listen, Mr. Gladstone, I know you think it's sort of odd, my trying to find out about Michael.”

This time he really did grin. “Not at all. You'd be surprised at how many attractive young ladies want to know all about Michael.”