Someone to Watch Over Me (10 page)

“I could really use a friend, Jax.”

“Well, you got one,” he said.

“And it sure seems like you could use one, too,” she said.

“Yeah. That would be good. Does that mean I can’t kiss you anymore?”

She frowned, puzzling it out. “Not exactly.”

“Can I hold you sometimes?”

“Yes. When you’re sad.”

“Just when I’m sad? What about when I’m very, very happy?”

“I guess that would be okay,” she conceded.

“Lonely?”

“Definitely.”

“Tired? Frustrated? Angry? Maybe when I just want to scream?”

“Or maybe whenever you want to?” She laughed. “It seems like you’re trying to cover every possible emotion.”

“I am,” he admitted.

“But you have to understand, it’s not going any further between us,” she insisted, still in his arms.

“Okay.”

“Don’t say it like that. If you really want to know, I’ll tell you exactly what you’d have to do.”

“Done,” he said, and he meant it.

“I don’t think so.”

“What do you want? Name it.”

“All you have to do is fall in love with me and then you have to marry me,” she said.

Jax stood there dumbfounded.

She laughed some more.

“You’re kidding, right?” he asked finally.

“No, I’m not.”

He kept waiting for the punch line, but none was forthcoming. “Are you telling me that you’re actually saving yourself for the man you marry?”

“Not for him. For me. And, in case you didn’t know, you’re looking at me like I just grew a second head.”

“You mean you’ve never…?

“Never,” she said.

“And you’re how old?”

“Twenty-four.”

“Wow.”

“And out popped a third head?” She laughed.

“I just…I don’t know if I’ve ever—”

“I know. Whole new way of thinking, right?”

“Is this a religious thing?”

“That’s part of it.”

He nodded. “Okay. What else? Why are you doing this?”

“Why wouldn’t I? I mean, just because it seems like everyone else is, doesn’t mean it’s the right thing for me. It’s my life.”

“But…why?”

“Because I think it’s something most people do all too easily, like it doesn’t mean anything at all, and it means something to me, Jax. It means a lot to me. And I have to admit, I’ve never been seriously tested…I mean, I’ve never really been in love, just…curious, and really, what kind of reason is that to give yourself to a man? Because you’re curious? I want to be in love. I want to find someone to share the rest of my life with and have children with, and until that happens, I can wait.”

“Wait?” he repeated, thinking,
For twenty-four years?

“It’s special,” she said. “My heart goes along with my body. That’s just the way I think it should be.”

“Okay,” he said, really meaning
okay
this time. The love-marriage-and-forever thing…He’d never really believed in it. He thought it was a fantasy, a fairy tale, an impossibility, but she obviously really wanted to believe it, and he didn’t want to be the one to make her see it for the sham it was.

He wished, for her sake, that it wasn’t a sham at all.

“Okay,” she said, looking relieved and quite happy. “So, we’re going to be friends?”

“Yes.” He guessed so. Just friends. It would be a whole new concept for him.

“And you’ll let me help you?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Can you open the closet now? Or would you like me to?”

That shoved his musings right out of his head.

She knew he couldn’t even open the closet? He didn’t like that at all.

But he didn’t feel lousy or like he was drowning anymore. Even odder, she seemed to understand perfectly why a grown man wouldn’t be able to do so much as open a linen-closet door.

He looked into her eyes and saw understanding and acceptance and compassion, things he’d never really needed or expected from a woman.

How was he to know it would feel so good?

She gave him a half shy, half knowing smile and reached around him for the doorknob, which made him want to kiss her all over again, which he really wasn’t supposed to do.

She had to reach way around him to get to the closet doorknob, which meant she was very, very close. He heard the click of the door latch giving, and when she started to pull away, he just couldn’t let her. Both because he wanted her close to him again and because he still wasn’t ready for the closet.

He slid his arms around her, holding her easily, staring down at her.

“It’s all right.” She brought her hands up to his face and stretched up on tiptoe. “We’ll take this one step at a time, until we get it done. And I’ll be here to help you.”

Clean out a closet, a house, all that was left of a life.

“It’s not about the closet,” he admitted. “Or all the stuff. I’m not even sure what it’s about.” But that was a lie. He knew, could never hide from it for long, even talking to a pretty woman.

It was about what his mother had said to him.

That he didn’t even know what was important in life, and now, she wasn’t even here to show him or to argue with him about it or to let him show her that she was wrong, that he did know, or that he hadn’t really screwed up his life.

“Jax, we don’t have to do anything tonight except clean out this closet. That’s it.”

“Okay,” he said, thinking it wasn’t, thinking if he could just shove all his feelings into some dark, hidden-away place, like a closet in his mind, he’d be fine.

Why couldn’t he do that and never have to face feelings like this again?

Surely there was a way to bury them for good.

Gwen let him go, reached behind him and opened that door.

He waited for everything he was trying to bury inside him to come spilling out, like water overflowing from a dam.

But nothing happened. She stepped back, tugging him by the hand, and he moved back, too, until she could open up that door.

It was kind of dark. There wasn’t much light at this end of the hall. And he stared inside, as though monsters might come roaring out.

But it was just a closet.

Towels and sheets.

He was acting scared of stacks of linens.

“I think sometimes I’m going crazy,” he admitted.

Gwen just smiled up at him. “Me, too.”

He supposed she did.

Gwen grabbed a stack of towels and handed them to him, and then grabbed another for herself, and they started sorting towels. Nothing earth-shattering. One step at a time.

Jax couldn’t believe how many towels his mother had. Every time he reached into the closet, he found more stuff.

“This is crazy,” he said when they were finally done. “She probably has another linen closet as stuffed as this one.”

“And we’ll tackle it another day.”

He held out a hand and hauled her to her feet, feeling more self-conscious with her than he ever had with a woman. He’d been about to fall apart one minute, kissing her the next, and then falling apart again.

How exactly had that happened?

“Gwen? How is this going to work between us?”

“I’m going to help you, and you’re going to help me,” she said, bending over and picking up a box, which she handed to him. “Another?”

“Yeah.” She stacked another on top of the first. “That’s it? You help me through this?”

“And you can help me, too.” She picked up a box of her own and then said, “You need a place to store things to give away, and you’ll probably have a lot of it.”

“Back bedroom, on the right. It has the least amount of stuff in it.” They both turned and headed for it. “How exactly am I going to help you?”

“By giving me something to do so I’m not alone every night,” she said.

“Not enough,” he complained as he set his boxes down in a corner and cleared some things out to make room for hers.

“It’s a lot to me. I don’t like being alone at night.”

He stood there and shook his head. “Still not enough.”

“Well, I’ll try to think of something, okay?”

“Okay,” he said. “You had dinner?”

“No.”

“Me, neither. Come on. The least I can do is feed you.”

T
hree days later, Jax was just getting out of the shower after work when he heard someone ringing the doorbell.

He picked up his watch off the edge of the sink and glanced at the time. Six-ten. He was expecting Gwen, but it was a little early for her. He heard Romeo bounding for the door and calling out a greeting, so he knew someone was there. Maybe Gwen was early.

He rubbed a bit of the water off his chest and from his hair, grabbed a pair of jeans and stepped into them.

The bell rang again. If he didn’t show up there soon, she’d think he wasn’t home.

“Coming,” he yelled, grabbing a shirt.

Romeo was yelping happily, standing at the back door with his tail swishing back and forth. He gave Jax a look that said,
Hurry! She’s here!

He grabbed for the door, pulling on his shirt, talking to her before he had it open. “Gwen, I’m starving. How about we eat first and then—”

He broke off midsentence.

It wasn’t Gwen.

It was all three of his sisters, scowling at him.

“And then what?” Katie asked, all wrapped up in one of her junior-real-estate-mogul suits, glancing pointedly at him, standing there with still wet hair and his shirt unbuttoned. “Not that I can’t guess. Honestly, Jax, what is wrong with you?”

She pushed him aside and came in.

His other two sisters gave him sad, worried looks and came inside, too.

“Why did you ring the doorbell?” he asked. “You never ring the doorbell at this house.”

“We weren’t sure what we’d find if we just walked in,” Katie said, plowing through the kitchen, into the living room and then down the hall to the bedrooms.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Looking to see what you and that woman have done to this house.” Katie came out of the first bedroom and headed for the second.

“That woman?”

“Gwen Moss,” Katie said, frowning when she didn’t find any evidence of Gwen’s presence.

“The whole town knows, Jax,” Kim said, looking like a hurt puppy.

“Knows what?”

“That you’ve taken up with her. Every night this week! People have seen you all over town and coming and going from this house. Your own mother’s house, Jax? The week after she died? What are you thinking?”

He gritted his teeth and managed not to yell. “Gwen’s helping me clean out the house. That’s it. We work, and then we usually grab something to eat. It’s the least I can do for all the work she’s putting in here.”

Katie laughed. “You’re seen with a woman for three
nights in a row, and you expect us to believe you’re doing nothing but cleaning out this house?”

“Do I make a habit of lying to you, Katie? Because I don’t remember ever doing that. Gwen’s not like that,” he said.

“Sure she’s not.” Katie folded her arms in front of her chest and glared at him some more.

Kathie and Kim looked even more miserable than they had at first, and Romeo was whining and cocking his head back and forth, like he just didn’t understand but he was going to figure it out, one way or another.

“What is the matter with you?” Jax yelled at Katie. “Mom dies, and you suddenly decide to run my life for me? Or that everything I’m doing is wrong, and that you need to tell me about it?”

“It looks awful. You here with that woman, right after we buried Mom. What would Mom think?”

“She’d be happy that I had someone to help me through this,” he said.

“Help you through this? In your usual way?”

He opened his mouth to say, no, not in the “usual” way, but he looked up and there was Gwen, standing just inside the kitchen door, taking everything in and looking horrified.

He stared at her, and then all three of his sisters stepped into the kitchen, turned and stared, too. Gwen looked like she wanted to disappear into thin air, and his sisters looked like they wanted to make her.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I knocked, but I guess nobody heard me. And…well…” She looked at Jax again, and she did, indeed, blush like crazy. “I’ll just leave the four of you to this. Sorry.”

“Gwen, wait,” he called out.

“Jax—”

“Shut up, Katie. You’ve done enough already.”

He took off after her. She turned and glanced at him, stalking across the deck, and walked even faster. Romeo must have thought it was some sort of game, because he bounded after Jax, overtook him and then caught up with Gwen, barking merrily and trying to get her to stop and play with him.

“Jax, would you get dressed?” she yelled back at him.

“If you’ll stop and talk to me.”

She stopped but didn’t turn around. Romeo made even more of a ruckus until she knelt down and petted him. Jax stood in front of her, noting that she hadn’t dared look above his ankles.

“Would you get back inside?” she said.

“In a minute. I didn’t want you running off upset. Or mad. I wanted to apologize for my nosy, interfering sisters,” he said, finally buttoning his shirt.

“Okay. You’ve done it. Now go home.”

“I’m sorry for what they said. Don’t worry. I’ll set them straight.”

“Fine.”

“You’ll come back when they’re gone?” he asked, because he’d gotten used to having her around. He didn’t dread the days so much, knowing he’d see her at the end of them.

“Okay. I’ll be there.”

“I’m really sorry, Gwen.”

“It’s all right. I don’t really care what your sisters think of me.”

“Well, I do,” he said.

They were doing the stair-step thing again when he went inside, all lined up in a row from oldest to youngest. Every time they did this, it took him right back to that day their father died and Jax thinking he had to hold it together for
the three of them and his mother. They’d followed him around like ducklings for months afterward, lost and scared and not knowing where else to turn, except to him and their mother.

And now there was no one but him.

He was so mad he could have spit nails one minute, and then he was ashamed of himself for yelling at them.

And he sure didn’t feel like being attacked by a mob of girls. When they ganged up on him, they could be formidable. He decided it was time to divide and conquer.

He took Katie by the arm and said, “Come with me.”

She came, and when the other two started to follow, he pivoted around and said, “Stay right there. I’ll be back.”

Katie started muttering about not liking being manhandled one bit, but he didn’t care. “I could throw you over my shoulder, if you like.” He’d been doing it since she was two, and she’d loved it then.

He got her outside on the deck, out of earshot of the other two, and then did a quick scan of the backyard and alley. Lucky him. No neighbors around to hear. He let Katie go, and then leaned back against the railing of the deck, looking as relaxed as he could manage. Folding his arms across his chest, he said, “Okay, lemme have it.”

She looked puzzled that he’d just invite her to do that, but quickly got into the spirit of things. “What are you doing?”

“Trying to get through this as best I can.”

“By picking up yet another woman, Jax?”

“I didn’t pick her up. I’m not even dating her. She offered to help me clean out the house. Something
you
never offered to do. Something
Kathie and Kim
haven’t offered to do. I couldn’t get the three of you to take so much as a fork out of this house without bawling over it and telling stories about every meal Mom ever cooked that
you ate with that particular utensil, and I can’t do that, Katie. I can’t have somebody crying over every object in that house and it taking us months to get rid of it all. I can’t.”

And of course, now she looked near tears. “I’m just not ready to let her go yet.”

“Well, neither am I, but nobody listened when I said I wasn’t ready. She’s gone, and that fact doesn’t change, whether we keep every speck of dust in that house in absolutely the same place it was when she lived here or whether we burn the place down. She’ll still be gone.”

“Well, you don’t have to have such a good time sorting through her things.”

He positively saw red at that. “I…am…not…having…a…good…time…. Got it?”

“You always manage to have a good time with a woman.”

“Well, this one feels like she’s saving my life, okay? I feel so miserable and so alone, I could just about choke to death on all the feelings I’m trying to stuff back inside me. And she’s there. She’s kind. She’s patient. She understands, and I need that. I need it so much it scares me. Can you understand that?”

Katie looked skeptical. Jax had never been one to admit to needing anyone.

“I’m doing the best I can, Katie. This is it. I can’t do any more. I’m thankful just to get through every day right now, and I’m sorry I don’t have more to give or that I can’t live up to some idea you have about how I’m supposed to grieve. But just because you don’t see it or it doesn’t look like what you think it should look like doesn’t mean I’m not hurting, too. I am. And you’ve got to stop jumping me every time you get upset.”

“I’m not,” she said, tears starting again.

“Yeah, you are, and I’ve got to tell you—putting my life in order is not going to solve your problems right now.”

“I’m not doing that. I never thought that—”

“Sure you did. Katie, you think it’s the answer to everything. Keep things in line, exactly the way you think things should go, and nothing bad will happen. Well, it doesn’t work that way.”

“I never thought it did,” she claimed.

“Sweetheart, you’ve been doing that your whole life. Ever since you were eight. The week after dad died, you reorganized the whole house. Don’t you remember?” No one had been able to find anything for months.

“I just…Things were a mess.”

“Yeah, they were. And if putting things in their place made you feel better, I’m fine with that. But you’re not eight anymore, and you and I have been down this lousy road before.”

She stood quietly in front of him, a fine trembling moving through her, tears falling freely now. He took two steps forward and pulled her into his arms.

She clung as tightly as she could and said, “I don’t know what else to do.”

“Well, we’ll just have to find something else.”

“I think I’m driving Joe crazy,” she confessed.

“Yeah, well…your fiancé will understand.”

“I’m not so sure. He’s been understanding me for a long time, and I think he may not have any understanding left where I’m concerned.”

“Sure he does. He loves you.”

“I’m not so sure anymore. I think I’ve managed to push him away the same way I’m pushing you.”

“Katie, you could never get rid of me. Never. Shove as hard as you want, it just wouldn’t work. I wouldn’t let you go. Not ever.”

“I’m sorry,” she sobbed.

“I know. I know.”

He comforted her as best he could, and then he dried her eyes and sent her off to her fiancé’s, to make her peace with him.

He took Kim next, who at twenty-one still tended to do most anything her older sisters wanted to do, which usually meant what Katie wanted, if Kathie wouldn’t argue with her, which Kathie seldom did. All Kim really needed to hear was that he missed their mother desperately. So he hugged her and let her cry for a few minutes and then sent her on her way, feeling guilty that he didn’t spend more time with her.

Kathie came outside last, and he could tell she’d been dragged along reluctantly on this little mission, because she looked as if she had serious regrets now. It wasn’t her nature to argue with anyone or to cause trouble.

“Sorry about that,” she said. “Really.”

He shrugged it off. “I’ll live.”

“I know it’s really hard for you,” Kathie said. “And I know we probably make you crazy and always have, but…Jax, I need to ask you something.”

He had a feeling he didn’t like what was coming, but reluctantly, he said, “Okay. Shoot.”

“All those women you’ve…dated?”

He raised an eyebrow at that. Kathie had never given him a hard time about that. He didn’t want one now from her.

“Well—” she drew in a breath and her gaze came up to meet his “—were you ever in love with any of them?”

“I thought I might be heading in that direction a couple of times, but…No. Didn’t work that way.”

“You never had one that, no matter what, you just
couldn’t get her out of your head? No matter how hard you tried? And I mean, really, really tried?”

“No,” he said, thinking,
Did she really think she was in love?

At twenty-four, he hoped not. She was way too naive. It would be way too easy for a guy to take advantage of her completely, because she always believed the best about everyone. He slid an arm around her, companionably, and said, “Somebody threatening to break your heart, darlin’?”

She hesitated. “Maybe. I mean, I’m trying not to let him, but…sometimes you just can’t help yourself, you know?”

“I don’t know. Is there some reason you know it won’t work out with this guy?”

She nodded bleakly.

“He’s just not a…a good guy?”

“No, he is. Really good. He’s a great guy.”

He’d better be, if he wanted to be with Kathie. “So, what’s wrong?”

“I can’t tell you.”

Oh.
The dreaded,
I can’t tell you.

Definitely a woman thing.

They came to him, said they needed to talk, made it sound positively dire, and then when it came down to the heart of the matter, they said,
I can’t tell you.
Which with his sisters, usually meant,
I’ll let you worry about it for a few days or so, and then I’ll tell you.

And other than losing their father and then their mother, they’d never run up against a problem they couldn’t solve. Jax was sure they could handle this one, too.

“You can tell me,” he said, because that’s what he always said.

“No. Really, I can’t.” Which was what they always said.

“Sure you can.”

“No,” she cried.

“Okay. If you’re sure…”

“I’m sure.”

“Well, what can I do?” he tried.

“I don’t know. Nothing, I guess. I mean, Mom would say that nothing was truly hopeless—”

Jax grinned. There it was. The platitude she needed at this moment. “Mom would definitely say that. So…just don’t give up.”