Someone to Watch Over Me (14 page)

The dog would be happy, and Jax wouldn’t have to fool with him anymore. He could go talk to his mother and the dog anytime he wanted to.

Jax, you really are losing it,
he told himself.

He looked up and realized he and Romeo weren’t far from his mother’s attorney’s office, and he decided it was time to have another little chat with Alicia. He walked into her office with his shirt still damp with sweat, smelling awful, and Romeo beside him.

“Sorry,” Jax said to her secretary, who he thought was the younger sister of a girl he’d dated about five years ago. “We didn’t exactly plan this, but I really need to talk to Alicia.”

Romeo set about charming the lawyer’s secretary until she agreed that he could sit there beside her while Jax talked to her boss. The dog could be useful at times. Jax walked into Alicia’s office and told himself to try not to sound too crazy if he could help it.

“Jax?” She seemed amused, and he hadn’t even said a word. “What can I do for you?”

“Why did my mother do this? Why did she leave everything up to me?”

“I don’t know.”

“Alicia, she didn’t leave things like this up in the air. She spent a day digging through her financial records, sorting them into piles by year and labeling them all so we could find everything once she was gone. She did that on a day when we didn’t think she should have even gotten out of bed. She didn’t take a pain pill, when she was in a lot of pain, so she’d be clearheaded enough to sort through a bunch of papers. This is not the kind of woman who just didn’t get around to making a real will.”

“Her will is perfectly real and valid, I assure you.”

“I’m not arguing legalities!” Jax yelled. “I’m just trying to make some sense of it, and it’s not like I can go ask her. Why did she do it? She must have had a reason.”

“If she did, she didn’t share it with me.”

“Did you ask?”

To which Alicia said nothing.

“So you did ask.” Jax could do this. He interrogated people for a living. “What did she say when you asked?”

“That’s between me and her. She was my client—”

“And I’m her son, and she’s dead. You can’t assert attorney-client privilege.”

“I can and I am. We’re not in a court of law, Jax.”

Jax swore softly. “Don’t you understand how hard this is for me? To live in that house? To be surrounded by all her things and know that I’m stuck there, to make all those decisions about everything that’s left of her life? I don’t know if I can do that.”

“I’m sorry. I know it’s hard.”

“Why won’t you help me understand this?” he begged.

“I’m trying. You think she was trying to tell you something by asking you to take care of things for her? Well, I do, too,” Alicia admitted. “But she didn’t tell me what it was.”

“Okay,” he said, thoroughly defeated, worried he might break down right there in Alicia’s office. “I don’t know if I can do this,” he repeated.

“You can.”

She was actually pretty nice about the whole thing, especially since he’d barged in here like a madman, screaming and making demands.

He apologized three times and then left. Romeo was eating out of the secretary’s hand—literally—when Jax walked out of the office.

“What a sweet thing,” she said. “I think he’s hungry.”

“I’m sure he is. We got a little carried away this morning with our run.” Jax looked back at the woman, thinking,
Why not?
“I don’t suppose you’d like to have a dog, would you?”

“I have three,” she said. “My husband swears the next dog I bring home, he’s leaving.”

Three dogs? Poor guy.
Jax thanked her for taking care of Romeo and they left.

He didn’t want to go home. All three of his sisters were probably there. Debbie would probably call him because he hadn’t called her like he promised, and if he tried to see Gwen, she’d likely ignore him. He was hungry and Romeo was probably starving. That seemed like the most pressing need.

They found a hot-dog vendor on the edge of the park. He pulled a twenty out of his pocket, and he and Romeo each had a hot dog and a bottled water. As Jax guzzled his down, he found himself facing the flower shop, wondering what he could possibly do to make Gwen not hate him so much.

Flowers were always an option.

Women loved that.

He knew. He’d sent a lot of flowers in his day, for reasons much less substantial than this. And Gwen wasn’t in the shop. She’d told him last night that she didn’t have to go in until noon.

Why not?
he decided.
Nothing to lose.

“Come on, Romeo. Let’s give it our best shot.”

Maybe nobody ever sent flowers to a woman who worked in a florist shop. Maybe she’d think the whole idea kind of funny or at least worth a smile.

Romeo was all too glad to go to the flower shop.

They walked in, and there was no one out front, so Jax rang the bell at the front desk, trying to figure out whether to have the flowers delivered or to work up his courage and take them to her door himself. He really wasn’t sure.

“Be right there,” someone called out from the back room.

And he knew that voice.

He walked behind the counter and into the stockroom, and there was Gwen.

S
he stopped short when she saw him. There was no yelling. No tears. Nothing. He appreciated that very much.

“Thought you weren’t on until noon,” he said.

“I wasn’t supposed to be, but Margie didn’t feel well this morning. I told her I’d cover for her. And I know you didn’t come looking for me, so…What can I do for the two of you?”

She waited, not looking happy, not looking like anything Jax could identify easily. He didn’t understand.

“Flowers for someone?” she suggested.

And then he got it. She thought he’d come into her flower shop to order flowers for Debbie.

“She didn’t stay, Gwen. Nothing happened.”

“Okay. Does she still get flowers?”

Her voice was cautiously even, her face carefully blank. He didn’t know what to make of it. He was used to women’s tears, to ones with a temper, to having to soothe them and try to make everything better for them. But he didn’t know what to do with Gwen.

“You’re not going to yell at me?” he asked.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Why would I?”

“I wasn’t very nice to you last night. I hurt your feelings. And I never should have taken off with Debbie in front of you.”

“Were you honest with me, Jax? When you told me how you feel about me and women in general?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Then you weren’t being mean. You were being honest, and I needed to hear it. It’s better, in the long run. You were right. I had no right to start thinking the things I was. None of it was your fault.”

“I think it was. You were kind to me, and I hurt you.”

“Not intentionally. Maybe not until you got into that car. You didn’t have to do that in front of me, but it’s not that you didn’t have the right. Because there’s really nothing between us, right?”

Yeah, right.

He’d messed up big-time.

“It was like a reflex. Like an old habit,” he tried.

“Reflex?”

“Finding someone to come home with me for a night or two.”

“Oh.” She laughed. “And to think, some people think of a reflex as the thing that makes their knee jerk when the doctor hits it with a little hammer.”

Yeah.
He deserved that.

“I just wanted to forget everything for a while. And as hard as it is for someone like you to understand, that’s one of the ways I forget. That’s my favorite way to forget, actually. “

“Okay,” she said, “but there’s more to it than that.”

“Yeah. Probably. Want to help me figure out why else I treat women that way?”

“Not while you’re still doing it.”

“That’s fair. What if I don’t do it? While you and I are…Well…What
are
we doing, Gwen?”

“I don’t know. What are we doing?”

“I’m just trying to get through the day. One after another. That’s it. That’s all I can manage right now. I think a better question is, what can I do for you? Because this just can’t be about you helping me. I’m not that selfish. Thoughtless, maybe. Sometimes. Like last night. But not selfish. At least I hope not. So, what’s in this for you?”

“I need a friend like you. And I don’t want to be afraid of men for the rest of my life. That’s really important to me, and I thought for a while I would be. But…I feel comfortable with you.”

Jax frowned. There was comfortable, and then there was
comfortable.
He was either flattered, or his overinflated ego was bruised. He wasn’t sure which.

And he needed to know.

So he came to her, very, very slowly, put his hands on her arms, up near her shoulders. She tensed and went still. He eased closer, until he was a breath away, and waited to see how she reacted. “Comfortable…like an old shoe?”

She took a breath and wouldn’t meet his eyes. “Not exactly.”

So there was some man-woman stuff going on. She felt it, too, and at the moment he was selfish enough to want her to, even if he didn’t know what to do about it.

He came closer, leaning down until his cheek was pressed against hers. He was careful not to let any other parts of their bodies touch, just hold her loosely and stand there, cheek-to-cheek.

He’d never taken the time to realize just how nice that could be. She had the softest skin, and she smelled like a
half a dozen different things. Flowers, soap, sunshine, nerves. He thought he detected them all.

He nudged his nose against her ear, heard her suck in a quick breath.

He was feeling very comfortable now, and yet he wasn’t. If he was lucky, she felt exactly the way he did.

What was he going to do about that?

Other than wish he could stay just like this. But he was the kind of man who picked up a woman to forget what happened on a lousy day, and she wanted someone to put a wedding ring on her finger.

So if he really wanted to be her friend, he had to want what was best for her—to find someone to love. But he wasn’t sure if he was a good enough guy to do that.

Maybe he wasn’t so nice after all.

“I was actually thinking,” she said, “since nothing’s really going to happen between us, because of the way you are and the way I am, that…maybe, you could be…Well—”

“Go ahead. Tell me. I can take it.”

“You could be like…a practice guy for me. To see if we could be friends without me being afraid.”

Okay.

He definitely wasn’t that nice of a guy.

Jax stepped back, let his hands drop to his sides. He’d asked, and she’d told him. He shook his head and tried to work up a smile, not really succeeding.

“Would that be too much to ask?” she tried. “I mean, it’s kind of like that already, isn’t it?”

“For you to get comfortable enough with the idea of being around a man, all so that you could leave me and go find another one?” He grimaced as he said it.

“I want to. Someday. I want a husband and children, and I know that’s not what you want, and it’s okay. I mean, we
both know what we want, right? And it’s completely opposite things. So nobody’s going to get hurt, right?”

“Yeah, right. How’d you feel last night when you saw me get in the car with Debbie?”

“I didn’t have any right to feel that way, Jax. I know that.”

“How’d you feel?”

“I felt a lot of different things.”

“Like you wanted to pull me out of that car? Call me an idiot? Those kinds of things?”

“Yes,” she admitted.

He nodded. “Good.”

“No, Jax. It’s not good—”

“Because when I got her back to my mother’s house, and that woman grabbed me, I closed my eyes and do you know what I saw?”

“No,” she whispered.

“I saw your face,” he admitted. “And I realized that what I wanted, more than anything, was for her to be you.”

She blinked up at him, like she was trying to comprehend how big the universe truly was or why a pair of socks could go into the wash and only one of them make it out of the dryer, or some other great mystery of the world.

“Well, that’s not going to work,” she said finally.

“Tell me about it.”

“You’re just not yourself right now, Jax. Everything’s all messed up. That’s all it is. You’ll get over it.”

“Maybe,” he admitted. “But I fall asleep dreaming about you, and I wake up dreaming about you.”

In his dreams, he didn’t have to put a wedding ring on her finger. She never even asked for one. He supposed, if he dreamed long enough, he’d walk away from her, the way
he did from all the others, and she wouldn’t even get her feelings hurt.

Jax’s perfect world.

He walked away. Nobody got hurt. And nothing ever, ever lasted.

“Well…maybe you’ve just never met a woman you couldn’t have,” Gwen said. “Did you think about that?”

“Yeah. I did. And don’t let this get around town, but there actually are women I’ve been interested in before that I’ve never had. I didn’t react this way to them.”

“How did you react to them?”

“I got bored and decided they weren’t worth the trouble and walked away. No big deal. I think you’re worth a lot of trouble, Gwen.”

“But I’m still never going to be the kind of woman you want, the kind who’ll be with you for a while and then walk away. So, we just don’t have anything to offer each other, do we?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s time I learned to just be friends with a woman.”

“Can you do that?”

“I can try. I mean it, Gwen. I’ll really try. I hated it this morning when I woke up and thought I might not get to see you again.”

“I didn’t want to not see you, either,” she admitted.

“I have a lot of people in my life who need so many things from me, and I try to give them all they need. But I realized in the last few months that I didn’t have anybody who was thinking about what I needed. I mean, my sisters, if I went to them and said I was in trouble and that I needed something from them…they’d move heaven and earth to give it to me. But I don’t say things like that to them.
I’ve
always tried to take care of
them.
”

“I think you need to say it to them. Everybody needs someone sometimes, Jax.”

“So, we have a deal? I practice the friendship thing with you,” he said. “And you practice your getting-comfortable-being-around-a-man thing on me?”

She frowned. “It sounds…perfectly reasonable and simple, but I’ve learned, things aren’t simple with you.”

“So I’ll work on it. I’ll simplify. What do you say? Friends?”

She frowned at him again. “You really dream about me?”

“Yes,” he said, sounding more irritated than he intended. “You like that idea, do you?”

She shrugged helplessly. “I shouldn’t.”

And then he had her in his arms, with things that felt like little, sparkly bubbles bouncing around inside of him.

They worked together that night when Gwen got off work, and then he walked her home and kissed her in the shadows of her front porch, then held open the door for her and waited until she was safely locked inside.

Then he went home and dreamed of her again.

On Monday, he reported back to work, managed to accept everyone’s condolences with some bit of grace and gratitude, he hoped, and was genuinely glad to be back at work.

His sisters called, one by one, and without jumping him, still managed to find out that, yes, he had been seen with Gwen Moss. But he shut them up fast by asking when they were going to come over and look through their mother’s things, to see if there was anything they wanted to keep, and he didn’t even feel that guilty about it.

They really needed to come to the house and start figuring out what keepsakes they wanted.

On Tuesday, he was still in a good mood, despite the fact that that morning, on their run, Romeo had whined and fussed and growled, until Jax had given in and run through the cemetery with the dog, stopping for a little visit to his mother’s grave.

He didn’t fall asleep, and he didn’t hear any voices, thankfully.

On Wednesday, Gwen had an idea for something to do with some of his mother’s stuff. Her cancer support group—the Bees. One of the things they did was help people get the things they needed to cope with the disease, and they’d probably be happy to have his mother’s scarf collection and her hats and even the wigs she’d tried and despised. Plus all the medical equipment they’d bought to help her through the last few months.

Jax had told her she was absolutely brilliant. Not only would it clear out a bunch of stuff, but it would be helping people his mother adored. It would have made her very, very happy.

There was no place to go with his relationship with Gwen, but he didn’t care. She was the only one he wanted to be with, the only one he wanted to touch and kiss.

And something had to give.

He wasn’t sure if it would be him or her.

But he didn’t see how this could go on much longer.

On Saturday, he pulled a three-to-eleven shift, and in the middle of it, he and his partner got called to a motel near the interstate, to a young woman who’d been roughed up by a guy she’d gone out with a few times and then decided to meet at that motel.

She’d liked him at first, she said. She’d trusted him, never thinking he would really hurt her. But when he got her into that motel room and she’d wanted to leave, he’d
gotten mad and scared her half to death, before the man in the next room had heard her scream and started pounding on the door and called the police.

The guy had run off before Jax and his partner arrived, and the young woman had been so distraught, they hadn’t been willing to leave her to go chase him.

She’d been roughed up pretty badly, and no matter how hard she tried, she just couldn’t stop shaking.

Jax had talked to her in a voice as soothing as possible, had held her hand, and he’d sat in the back seat of the car with her as they’d driven her to the hospital to be checked out. She’d let him put his arm around her in the emergency room as she’d waited for the doctor to see her, and she’d sobbed her heart out with her face buried against his shoulder, but in all that time she hadn’t stopped shaking. Not once.

And all he’d been able to think of was Gwen.

He’d called her from the hospital as soon as he could get to a phone, to make sure she was okay, and told her to be sure her doors were locked, because they still hadn’t caught the guy. But they had ID’d him, and his grandmother lived not far from Gwen.

And there was really no reason to think, after attacking one woman that night, he’d ever go after another, particularly a complete stranger like Gwen.

But reason was not playing a big part in Jax’s actions that night.

He’d never been able to reason with Gwen anyway. Their entire involvement made absolutely no sense, and yet he kept seeing her.

So why would logic come into play in something like this?

He’d stayed with the girl until the emergency-room doctor decided to admit her and her parents arrived. And the minute he was off duty, he’d headed straight to Gwen’s.

He called from his car when he was five minutes away, saying, “Tell me you are still up, because I’m coming over.”

“I’m still up, because you’re coming over,” she repeated.

“Good.”

She laughed. “I was making fun of the way you just announced you were coming and that I’d better be ready, Jax, not agreeing with you.”