The Protector (34 page)

“So am I. I think something happened to him. I can’t imagine him not being here for Christmas if he could.”

“Again, please don’t borrow trouble.”

“He isn’t a man to abandon me like this.”

“It took you the better part of two years to reach acceptance of what happened. Ash held on to his anger for much longer than you did. He needs the time. Let him have it.”

“He felt responsible for what happened.”

“That’s his right,” Jack cautioned her, understanding why Ash would have reacted the way he had.

“I just wish I knew where he was spending this day.”

Jack needed to shake her out of this growing melancholy. “Do you want to try and find your mouse tonight?”

“Are you up to it?”

He smiled at her doubt. “I think I can find the energy if you can.”

“I tried to sort through some of the boxes, but I found the closet has been used as the place to store everything I didn’t want to unpack in the last move so it’s a bit chaotic.” Cassie stood and offered Jack a hand to pull him to his feet.

Jack set Benji in the small box that had become her bed.

Cassie turned on the lights in the bedroom, opened the closet doors, and turned on the lights in the walk-in closet. “Where do you want to start?”

“I’ll hand out the boxes if you want to stack them in the hall.”

“There’s no room in the hall. What if we stack them between the dresser and the bookcase in here?”

Jack was doubtful that they would fit, but it would mean she had to carry them a shorter distance. “We can try it.”

He moved aside the hanging clothes. If he worked clockwise around the closet… “This mouse is white.”

“Yes.”

“You’re sure it lives in here?”

“I’ve seen it three times.”

Had he known there were this many boxes he would have suggested it another night. Maybe if he got them at least shifted away from the walls so the mouse wouldn’t have a place to hide… Jack picked up the first box, deciding to first clear out enough space so he could turn around. He made sure Cassie had both her arms under the box and that the heavier part of the box was toward her left arm before he released it.

As he started to move clothes around on the rods to reach boxes below them, he realized she had been wearing only a fraction of her wardrobe since Thanksgiving. It was past time to take her out to a nice dinner. “This box has broken tape on the bottom.”

She took it gingerly. “Got it.”

“Jennifer wants to talk about religion.” Cassie had trusted him; he was going to return the favor. Frankly he needed some advice.

Cassie bobbled the box. “Does she?”

“Where am I supposed to start reading the Bible?”

“Jack, we jumped from a mouse to a discussion about Jesus. Did I miss something?”

He shot her a smile. “I am so glad similar shifts in conversation levels confuse you in the same way it does me. Every time Rachel does it I get lost.”

She looked relieved at that. She carefully set down the box atop others. “You want me to tell you where to start reading the Bible.”

“It’s a thick book.”

“Actually, it’s sixty-six books put together into one book.”

She laughed at his look.

“You’ve read them all,” he guessed.

“Yes, although I admit some of them are easier to read than others. What exactly does Jennifer want to talk about?”

“Jesus.”

“Try opening the Bible to the middle, then open the section to the right in the middle again. That will probably put you in the book of Luke or John. Those books are basically biographies of Jesus’ life.”

“I don’t suppose there are CliffsNotes?” he asked, hopeful. He glanced over at her. She was doing her best not to laugh. “I didn’t think so.”

“Jack, it’s not a hard book to figure out. Read it with common sense. When does she want to talk about it?”

“She’s heading to Johns Hopkins on January 3 to start the next round of chemotherapy. Sometime before then, I imagine.”

“Start with the book of Luke. It’s practical. I like it.”

“Jen’s going to tangle me in word knots like Rachel does.”

“Not intentionally,” Cassie offered sympathetically.

“They never do it intentionally,” Jack countered. He pushed aside shoe boxes, looking to see if any had corners chewed out. He was reaching the last wall of boxes and so far there had been no sign of her uninvited guest.

“What are we going to do for New Year’s Eve?”

Jack liked the assumption of we. “Besides cut drunks out of car wrecks?” he asked, remembering last year.

“True. Besides that.”

“I’m not big into late night parties.”

“Do you want to bring over a movie? We could invite Cole, Rachel, make pizzas.”

“Sure, we could do that.”

“Your family wouldn’t mind?”

“Nothing formal is planned. We’re scattering to different parties this year.” Jack picked up the next box. “Be careful with this one. I feel something sharp on the right side.” He was getting down to the last of the boxes. “I don’t think your mouse was home tonight.”

“Or he’s inside one of these boxes,” Cassie offered, worried.

Jack tipped forward the next to last box labeled books. “Get him!”

Cassie scrambled toward the scurrying mouse that darted into the room and headed toward the dresser, trying to cut the mouse off. She was too late. “It’s a her,” she corrected, using her foot to block the path the mouse had used.

Jack sat on the carpet in the now almost empty walk-in closet and rested his arms across his upraised knees. “She just went behind the boxes we just moved.”

“I’m afraid so.” Cassie looked at him and she couldn’t stop the giggles.

“It’s not funny.”

“Yes, it is.”

She walked over to the closet doorway and leaned against the door frame. “You got beaten by a mouse.”

He tossed a wadded up sock at her.

“I could go get Benji and let her try,” Cassie offered.

“As you’re the one who has to sleep in a room with a mouse, I wouldn’t laugh too hard. Do you have some cheese? We can at least try to lure it out of the bedroom.”

Cassie pushed her hands deeper into her pockets as she stood on the curb and watched Jack scrape the frosted windows of his car. He had declined to let her help. “Would you call me when you get home?”

“Of course.”

“I don’t mean to imply you’re a bad driver.”

Jack laughed. “Just that everyone else is.”

“Exactly.”

He opened the passenger door and tossed the windshield scraper onto the floorboard. “I had a good Christmas, Cassie.”

“So did I.”

“I see someone has added a hat to our snowman.”

She looked toward the playground. A baseball cap had been pushed down on the snowy white head with a carrot nose and charcoal brick eyes. “He looks dashing.” A gust of wind blew snow from the overhang. She shivered and wrapped her arms tighter around her waist. “I’m going to head in before I freeze.”

Jack grinned at her. “Good idea, you’re turning blue. I’ll call.”

“Thanks.” She hurried back up the walkway.

A car door slammed to her right and she glanced over. Her feet went out from under her and she fell hard on the sidewalk. “Ash.”

Thirty-six

S
he heard someone rushing up the walkway, then realized Jack had seen her fall. Her attention was focused solely on the man standing by an old Plymouth. There was no mistake about who he was. Ash was a ghost of the man she remembered—thinner, a suggestion of hesitancy where there had once been obvious confidence— but he was really here. “Ash.”

He started walking toward her, pushing his hands into his pockets. “Hello, Cassie.”

Rather than help her up, Jack stood between the two of them. Cassie grabbed the edge of his coat, using the hold to get leverage to sit up. “It’s okay, Jack. The man I saw at the fire was not Ash,” she murmured, understanding Jack’s instinctive move. Ash had grown a beard; his clothes were flannel and denim and his leather jacket looked beat-up.

She caught Jack’s hand and forced him to give her his attention. He reached down and helped her up.

“I would have been here earlier but the snowstorm slowed me down. I wanted to spend Christmas with you,” Ash said quietly, stopping a few feet away. “Hello, Jack.”

“Ash.”

Cassie felt like she was dreaming. He was really here. The prayer she had prayed for months had been answered. She hadn’t been expecting it and that made her feel ashamed for doubting. “Please, come in,” Cassie urged. Months that Ash had been gone…she wanted to know all the details. And she was nervous about those answers. Her hand around Jack’s tightened painfully, hoping he’d offer to stay without her needing to ask him.

Jack didn’t even give her a choice about it. He took the keys from her and settled his arm around her shoulders, putting himself between Ash and Cassie. “Were you driving into this storm?”

“Skirting along its edge. I was in St. Louis yesterday coming up from the gulf.”

“You do look like you’ve got a bit of a tan,” Cassie offered, getting her first good look at her partner in the light from the front door. He’d aged. The man she admired and trusted and followed without question into a fire was different tonight than the man she remembered.

“I was out chasing a sunburn again.”

He looked different, but he was starting to sound the same.

Upstairs, Jack unlocked the apartment door and returned her keys.

“You’re moving?” Ash asked, on seeing the boxes.

“Cleaning house,” Cassie replied, shooting Jack an amused glance.

“You’re a brave man. I helped her move in originally,” Ash commented to Jack.

Cassie started to slip off her coat and Jack stopped her. His hands on her shoulders tightened and he leaned down. “Go change into something with long sleeves,” he whispered.

She shot him a look, saw the sympathy, and understood. “Keep Ash company?”

“I’ll host.”

Cassie went to the bedroom before she slipped off her coat. She changed, choosing her best sweater, a soft pink cashmere. On their first meeting Ash didn’t need to encounter her most vivid scars from the accident. She was relieved Jack had caught her attention before she slipped off the coat. She ran a brush through her hair and went to rejoin them.

The two men were standing by the patio door. Their conversation was pitched too low for her to hear.

Jack turned when he heard her come back in. She smiled as she saw he was holding Benji. He walked over to join her. “I’ll leave and let you two have a chance to talk,” he said softly. He handed her the kitten.

“Jack.” She didn’t want him to leave.

He hugged her. “Listen to him, honey,” he whispered. “Then call me.”

He wasn’t giving her a choice; he was pulling on his coat. “I’ll call.” She reluctantly walked him to the door and locked it behind him.

Ash hadn’t moved from his place beside the patio door. “Jack gave me the kitten for Christmas,” she commented as she set B. J. down on her towel, suddenly nervous as she didn’t know what to say.

“I won’t stay long.”

“Ash—I’ve been hoping so long to have you back, but now that you’re here, I don’t know what to say.” She sat on the couch and gestured to the chair. “Why didn’t you tell me you were leaving? Where have you been? Why didn’t you call? Oh, it’s good to see you.”

“Cassie.” He waited for her to run down. “I got a call from an investigator looking into a fire in Tallahassee. It fit the pattern of the fire we had here, so I decided to go check it out.”

“That abruptly? You couldn’t tell me you were leaving?”

“I was tired of pacing, of being able to do nothing. I didn’t mean to abandon you; I just felt like until I could find something out, I had nothing left to offer you. And I wanted out. I’m not proud of it, but that was where my head was at.”

Cassie wished he understood how much he had been doing just by being there for her. She heard so much lingering pain in his voice. “The accident wasn’t your fault. And the man who set the nursing home fire died in a car accident in New Jersey.”

“I heard about his accident.”

“But you still didn’t come back.”

“It’s taken the last couple months to decide if I wanted to have a firefighter’s life again.”

“What changed your mind?”

He gave her a small smile. “The memory of your determination to get to this day and have your new beginning. I decided I needed one too.”

“I’m glad.” She leaned her head back against the couch. “I don’t think you’ve changed, Ash. You’re still stubborn, impatient. And you would have gotten answers faster had you stayed here instead of taking off on your own.”

He smiled at her. “You look well, Cassie.” The subject changed abruptly. “What’s been going on here that I missed? Besides Jack getting his act together.”