Together With You (19 page)

So did countless people from countless generations. Maybe Ryan was the fool. But logic told him God was a figment of the human imagination, a vain attempt to ward off the fear of death . . . fear of everything. Determined to be strong like his father, he jammed the book back on the shelf and went to bed.

Four hours later, he jarred awake in the dark. Haunted by dreams of Carly, he lay twisted in the sheets with the unwanted images mocking his resolve to control his feelings for her. He had a choice, a clear one. But how did a man resist the tug and pull of nature—the forces that carved the Grand Canyon, shifted the tides, and pushed up mountains with earthquakes? He thought of those Psalms that were just poetry, the advice in Proverbs, the craziness of God made man, dying for sins, and rising from the dead, the God that supposedly gave men the strength to resist temptation.

If that God was watching, Ryan wanted to know. “If you're there,” he said to the dark, “let the wrestling match begin.”

S
hortly after Carly's decision to go to Anacapa, the Cincinnati Reds arrived in town to play the Los Angeles Dodgers. She was nervous about going with Ryan and wisely so. The plan originally called for Eric and Kyle to go with them while Fran watched Penny, but when Eric begged off, Kyle asked to invite Taylor. It made sense, except pairing off with Ryan made the evening feel like a date.

She rode next to him in the front seat of the Honda, while Kyle and Taylor held hands in the back. At the stadium he helped her out of the low-slung car, grasped her elbow on the steps to their box seats, then surprised her with nachos because he'd heard her tell Taylor they were her favorite. Carly knew this wasn't a date. He was showing Kyle how to treat a woman, but it
felt
like a date.

The next morning, she woke up humming “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” Not ready to let go of that good feeling, especially since the Reds had bested the Dodgers 12–10 in extra innings, she put on an old Reds T-shirt and made her way to the kitchen.

Ryan, dressed for work and already sipping coffee, glanced at the shirt and grunted. “Go ahead. Rub it in.”

But somehow she couldn't. A nanny didn't joke around with the boss. She didn't sit next to him for fourteen blissful innings, occasionally brushing his knee and sharing the last bag of peanuts. A nanny didn't do a lot of things that had become habit for them, like watching old sitcoms after Penny went to bed, or talking late into the night about everything from the kids to politics to their worst high school memories.

Ryan was waiting for her to say something about the game when her phone rang in her bedroom. “It's probably my dad. I better get it.”

She retreated down the hall, lifted the phone, and saw LAPD on the screen. Grief for Bette sunk its fangs into her, but she steeled herself to handle the call. “Hello?”

“Miss Mason? This is Detective Hogan.”

“Yes . . .” She hoped she sounded calmer than she felt. “Is there news about . . . about what happened?”

“Perhaps. Can you come to the station around two o'clock?”

“I'll make it work.”

Shaking inside, she ended the call and returned to the kitchen. Ryan was waiting for her. “Is everything all right?”

“No. I mean . . . yes. Everything's fine.” She chewed her lip. “That was Detective Hogan. There's news about the murder. I'm going to the station at two o'clock.”

He took a step toward her but stopped. “I'll go with you.”

“But you're taking Penny to see Miss Monica.”

“I'll reschedule.”

“No. Penny expects to see her. We need to stick to her routine.”

Ryan's straight brows collided. “I don't mind canceling, and she won't either.”

“I can handle it,” Carly assured him. And she could. What she
couldn't
handle was the yearning to say yes because she wanted to spend the afternoon with him.

He gave her a careful look, then laid a hand on her shoulder. “Call if you change your mind.”

Seven hours later, Carly walked into the West L.A. police station, told the desk sergeant about her appointment with Detective Hogan, and waited nervously in the lobby until Detective Hogan lumbered toward her. That awful night roared to life in her mind, and she approached him with questions on the tip of her tongue.

“Miss Mason.” He extended his hand. “Thank you for coming today. I know your time is valuable.”

He probably said that to everyone. “Do you have a suspect in custody?”

“Let's talk in private.”

He led her down the long hall to a room with six desks, ringing phones, computer screens, and the low hum of conversation between a mix of men and women, some in uniform and others in suits or ordinary clothes. Family photographs sat on desks, along with mugs, pens, and the flotsam of life. She could have been in any office, but then her gaze landed on Detective Hogan's desk and an 8 x 10 photo of a gaudy bracelet with pink and silver beads.

A chill swept down Carly's spine, and she gasped. “That belonged to Bette. I gave it to her. How did you get it?”

The detective guided her to the chair at the side of his desk. “Would you like something to drink? Water? A soft drink?”

“No. But thank you.” She wrung her hands in her lap, aware of the sheen of cold sweat.

Detective Hogan sat in his big chair and rocked back. “A woman found that bracelet in her seventeen-year-old son's room, along with some narcotics and drug paraphernalia. She brought it to us in the spirit of tough love and the idea we'd scare him about the drugs. She had no idea what the bracelet meant, but his
fingerprints in the apartment made the link to Ms. Gordon's murder indisputable.”

A feverish anger burned in Carly's brain. “But why? Why did he keep the bracelet?”

“It's a souvenir, a trophy, if you will. We made the link because almost everyone we interviewed said Ms. Gordon liked flashy bracelets. One of the bakery workers even described this one to us. Apparently it was Ms. Gordon's favorite.”

Sick to her stomach and seething, Carly stared at the photograph until she thought she might scream.

Detective Hogan let out a sigh. “At least we know who did it.”

“Yes.” A small consolation, but Carly latched on to it. “What's going to happen next?”

“Arraignment. Plea bargaining. Maybe a trial.” He could have been talking about the weather. “There's a chance the kid will turn on his friends.”

Carly nodded, as if she understood, but none of it made sense to her—not the violence or the madness behind it, and especially not the internal clash in her soul between wanting mercy for a boy younger than Allison and justice for Bette. All she knew was that she wanted to go home to Boomer County and stay there.

Detective Hogan advised her to keep in touch in case she was needed for the trial; then he cleared his throat. “That's it, unless you have questions.”

“No.” Carly leapt to her feet. “I have to go.”

He walked her to the lobby. After a quick good-bye, she shot across the street to the parking lot. The summer heat slapped her in the face, and her nose burned with the stench of melting asphalt. When she looked up at the sky for solace, she saw an ugly brown haze. A lump ballooned in her throat, but she forced it down. If she couldn't go home to Kentucky, she'd do the next best thing. She'd find Ryan and Penny at the Dairy Queen.

“She's doing very well,” Miss Monica said to Ryan. “You're fortunate to have Carly.”

If Ryan were a believing man, he'd think God had answered Fran's prayers for him. Sometimes life was too good to be true, and lately that was the case—even if the Dodgers had gotten slapped down by the Reds. It was worth it to see Carly having such a good time. He hoped her meeting with Detective Hogan went well. As soon as he and Penny were settled at Dairy Queen, he planned to call her.

Miss Monica pushed her big red glasses up on her nose. “Penny's still confused about her mother, but you're handling it as well as anyone could.”

“So you agree about that photograph of Jenna?” He'd discussed it with her before she took Penny into the playroom.

“Yes, I do. The sooner, the better.” Miss Monica gave him a warm smile. “She really is doing well. As long as Carly's in the picture, I don't need to see her anytime soon. I'll leave the next appointment up to you.”

Ryan thanked her for all her help, called Penny away from the play table, and walked her out of the office. The Dairy Queen was in the same shopping center, so they headed toward it, Penny clinging to his hand. Getting ice cream was a post-therapy ritual, and one of the things he'd crossed off the SOS list.

“So what should we get today?” he asked as they neared the glass wall of the ice cream shop.

Penny looked up at him and grinned. “Vanilla!”

Her favorite, but he knew that now. As he pushed the door open, frozen air slapped him in the face. Even more startling was the sight of Carly waving from a booth near the play area. In spite of the warmth in her eyes, she looked pale, tired, and a little lost. Penny pulled away from him and ran to her. Carly hugged her;
then she looked back at him. Their gazes locked like magnets on metal, but they both stopped short, a foot apart with an invisible wall between them.

Instead of hugging her like he wanted, he jammed his hands in his pockets. “How'd it go?”

“It was hard, but I'm better now. Seeing you, being here.” She touched Penny's cheek, but Ryan felt as if she'd touched him, even more so when she raised her eyes and sought his. “It helps to be with a friend.”

“Let's get ice cream, then you can tell me everything.”

They ordered their favorites—a cone for Penny, an Oreo Blizzard for Carly, and a hot fudge sundae for himself. Then they sat at the booth she'd staked out. It was early afternoon, between lunch and dinner, so the place was almost empty. Penny wolfed down the cone, then scampered to the play area. The instant she was out of earshot, Ryan turned to Carly. “What did Hogan have to say?”

Her face paled in the bluish light. “They have one of the suspects in custody. He's just seventeen. His mother—” She shook her head. “She found Bette's bracelet in his room, along with a stash of drugs. She called the police, but she had no idea her son was part of a murder.”

“That's rough.”

“It's awful for everyone. I can't imagine what she's feeling right now.” Carly let out a slow breath, glanced through the front window, then turned back to him with a calm expression carefully arranged on her face. “There's nothing more to tell, really. Right now, I just want to feel normal.”

Ryan couldn't change the ugliness of Bette's death, but he could give Carly a bit of a respite. “Want to hear about my day?”

“Sure.”

“An elderly couple came into the office. New patients. The Wigglebottoms.”

“Wigglebottoms?”
Laughter burst out of her mouth. “Is that seriously their name?”

“No,” he said. “It's Wiggleworth, but the new receptionist couldn't read the handwriting on the registration forms—”

“Or she reads children's stories.”

“Anyway, that's what she put on the file, and I called the wife Mrs. Wigglebottom. Try saying
that
with a straight face.”

“Oh no! What did she do?”

“Fortunately, she thought it was hilarious.” Ryan's cheeks warmed with the memory of Mrs.
Wigglebottom
, age eighty-three, shaking her ample hips. “Fran razzed me about it all day. I'll never live it down.”

“What about the new receptionist?” Carly asked. “I hope you didn't fire her for it.”

“No, not even close.” What he was about to say surprised him. “I've loosened up. A few months ago, I'd have been an ogre about it. Now I see it for what it was. A mistake by a nervous new employee. No harm done.”

“I'm glad.”

“Me too.” Relaxed now, he stretched a leg. “You can bet I'll never forget Mrs. Wigglebottom.”

Fresh laughter spilled out of Carly's throat, a little too loud and out of control. It built into all-out giggling that wasn't giggling at all but a mess of the day's emotions. When a tear slipped down her cheek, Ryan reached across the table and wiped it away with his knuckle. Her eyes drifted shut, and she leaned into his touch. But then her lids flew open, as if she remembered where they were, who they were.

He remembered, too. “Must be the doctor in me,” he said, sounding gruff. “I see watery eyes and feel compelled to check them out.”

She snatched up a napkin and dabbed at the tears. “I'm all right.”

“Good, because I—”
hate to see you cry.
Sealing his lips, he whipped his gaze to Penny going down a red plastic slide. Instead
of settling him down, the sight of her happy face stirred him up even more. He owed Carly so much. He needed her, wanted her in his life. But how did he pursue a relationship with a woman who was already a part of his family?