A Second Chance at Love: A Hometown Hero Series Novel (7 page)

“Come with me,” he said, huskily, standing, and pulling her with him. He pushed through to the ensuite, and started the water running. “Get in, Madeline.”

She looked at him archly. “Were you always this dictatorial?”

His smile lacked amusement, and also warmth. “No. But I used to think you knew what was good for you.”

She shivered a little. But the feelings he was evoking were too good. Too perfect.

“Obviously, I was mistaken. I should never have let you go. I should have bundled you into my car and kidnapped you. Made you marry me.”

She shook her head. “You couldn’t do that, Harrison. You’re too good. Too kind.”

“Perhaps. I was an idiot though. And so were you, Madeline. What were you thinking, letting your father make these choices for you?”

He opened the door to the shower and nudged her inside. He followed immediately behind her and trapped her against the wet, cold tiles. She shivered. “I mean it. You are smart and you are confident. Your father’s a jackass. Why the hell did you let him put an end to us?”

She could never tell Harrison. It was the impossible, unending conundrum. For even once Kenneth was dead, Harrison would still be chief of police in the county. His obligation would be to report Diana’s crime, if he knew of it. And so Madeline shook her head. “Old habits die hard.”

“Aint that the truth,” Harrison nodded, an ironic smile on his face. “Turn around. Let me wash the honey off your shoulders.”

She did as he said, reaching up subconsciously to feel the slick of gold that had trickled down her back.

With her facing the wall, and water cascading over them, he traced a line of soap from one shoulder to the other, and then discarded it. He ran his hands over her skin, admiring and pleasuring. She was standing straight, her head pressed to the tiles. But he wanted her. She was as light as a feather, it was easy for him to pull her legs backwards, positioning her so that her torso was bent forwards. He gripped her hips and entered her swiftly from behind, taking pleasure from the way her whole body jumped at the invasion.

“Harrison,” she moaned, spreading her legs a little wider to give him better access. “Oh, Harrison.” With the water running over them, he brought one hand around to cup her breasts, and the other to feel the front of her core, teasing in time with his thrusts, as her pitch of desire reached a crescendo.

They climaxed as one, his body answering every challenge hers delivered, until they were both besieged by pleasure. She wondered how she’d ever lived without him for so long. “Eight years,” she said breathlessly, shaking her head from side to side.

He turned her around in his arms, and his expression was, for the briefest of moments, tortured. She lifted a hand and touched his cheek, instinctively wanting to erase that from him. But he flinched away, his anger with her returning.

“You didn’t ever call. You didn’t ever think of me again, did you?”

Her blue eyes searched his face. “I thought it would make it worse. A clean break was best.”

“Why?” He squeezed some more soap into his hands and began to rub it over her body, cleansing her breasts with great care.

She opened her mouth to say something but hit a wall. There was so much between them. So many lies. And they’d all come from Madeline. She couldn’t tell him what she knew about Diana. It was Diana’s secret, but Madeline had a duty to protect it. She couldn’t tell him the truth of her marriage to Dean; that was Dean’s secret but it was her duty to protect it. She’d promised him that, and she owed him that much still.

“Why?” She went on the attack, spurred to it out of defence of her own actions. “So that you could go get someone else pregnant, Harrison. You hardly sat around waiting for me, did you?”

He flinched at her accusation.

“Ivy’s almost six. So at most you sulked around for, what, a year? Probably less. I’m sure Ivy’s mother wasn’t the first woman you consoled yourself with. So why are you acting as though I ruined your life? You seem to have moved on just fine.”

He paled visibly, and stepped away from her. “Don’t talk to me about Sal.”

Madeline swallowed past the painful lump clogging her throat.

“Why not? You want to know about Dean? Why can’t I ask about the woman you loved after me? The woman you loved enough to have a baby with?”

“Because she’s nothing to do with you.”

“And Dean is with you?”

“Your father chose him for you. Hand picked your perfect political groom. You left me, and married him. You’re still married to him, Madeline, and you’ve just spent the better part of an hour making love to me. So yeah. I have a bit of a right to ask about your marriage.”

“And what? Sally would be fine knowing that we’d just done that in your home? You don’t think she’d feel just the tiniest bit betrayed, Harrison? At the end of the day, life worked out pretty great for you. So don’t act as though I ruined everything for you.”

“You think so, huh?” He stepped out of the shower and grabbed a towel. He rubbed his face roughly, then wrapped it around his waist. “Then let me get you up to speed, Madeline. After you left me, I was completely adrift. Yeah, Sally helped me find my feet again, and the happiness of pregnancy was exhilarating. But there was always a hole in my life because you weren’t there. Do you know how guilty that made me feel? Sal was pregnant and I was actually missing you.” He shook his head. “That guilt… God, it made me hate you. You were married, and I was basically cheating on Sally with my dreams of you.” He slammed a palm into the wall. “And she died, Madeline. I never got a chance to make it up to her, because she died.”

“What?” Madeline switched the water off and braced herself against the tiles. “What do you mean?”

“She died. The day after having Ivy.” He closed his eyes against the intense pain of the memory. “She got to hold her baby. Got to name her. And then she died.”

Madeline felt cold all over. From the tip of her head, to her toes. “How?”

“Postpartum haemorrhage. She bled to death. It’s extremely rare and happens very quickly.”

“Oh, Harrison.” She stepped out of the shower and put a hand on his arm. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”

Her mind was spinning. “You were married?”

“No. Sally didn’t want that.” He shook his head.

“But you proposed?”

His eyes flashed to hers. “Of course I did, Madeline. You were as good as married. Sally was pregnant. Of course I damn well proposed.”

Madeline blinked, and reached for a towel. She wrapped it around her body, just above her breasts, and sucked in a deep breath. “I’m just trying to make sense of stuff, Harrison. Don’t shout my head off.”

“There is no making sense of this. What would have made sense is if you’d married me. Everything else is just a mess.”

“Except Ivy,” she pointed out with a small smile.

“Yeah. Except Ivy.”

He stalked through the doorway, into his study, and grabbed his jeans off the ground. He pulled them onto his naked body and tossed the towel aside.

“You came here to talk, Madeline. Are we done?”

Her stomach ached. Her body was sore and tired. Her mind was spinning. But outwardly, she appeared to have returned to her serene self. Only the frantic racing of her pulse betrayed the heightened emotions she was feeling. And he wasn’t looking at her closely enough to see it. His eyes were glazed over, his hands on his hips.

“Do you think we’re done?” She asked quietly, turning the question back on him. “Pass me my clothes, please.”

He bent down to gather her underwear and passed them to her. “I think you shouldn’t have come here tonight. I think you shouldn’t have come into town. I think you should have done me the courtesy of staying out of my life, since you chose not to be a part of it.”

“Is that what you want?”

He walked across to the corner of the room and scooped up the enormous wedding ring she wore. He looked at it for a long, pained moment.

“It puts that piece of tin I gave you to shame, huh?” He asked quietly, without answering her question, lifting it and putting it in her palm. She slid it onto her wedding finger, her eyes loaded with pain.

“Harrison? Do you want me to go?” She asked again, when he hadn’t spoken for a long time. She pulled her sweater on, glad for the vital seconds it took to compose her facial features.

He punched his hand into the wall of his study, making the drywall crack. He would have yelled except that Ivy was upstairs, fast asleep. “
You’re married
. What I want doesn’t matter.” Predictably, guilt was becoming his principle emotion. He didn’t trust Maddie to make good choices. She’d shown herself to lack that ability. But he expected more of himself.

Why had he seduced her? She’d come to talk and he’d thrown himself at her.

“Yeah, Madeline. I want you to go. Take your married self out of my house.”

When they’d been dating, and they’d been in love, Madeline would have challenged him to be reasonable. To understand her predicament. But eight years had changed them. Not their chemistry. Them. Inherently, they were different people. Harrison Samson had a streak of bitterness that had never been there, and he was older, more cynical, and less forgiving. He was jaded, now.

And so was she.

Once, Madeline would have believed that it would all work out for them, simply because she loved him. But now? Now she had to accept that life didn’t guarantee happy endings. She couldn’t get everything she wanted with Harrison, but she could get out of his life, and keep Diana safe from prosecution.

She lifted her chin in a defiant angle. “I’m truly sorry that we’ve come to this, Harrison. What we were… that deserved better.” She put a hand on his and stood on tiptoes, kissing his cheek.

Then, she walked out, leaving him furious and perplexed, staring after her beautiful, brave silhouette.

CHAPTER FIVE

“Are you listening, Harrison?”’

He continued staring at his screen, but the numbers weren’t coming into focus. Routine traffic stop statistics had never been his favourite thing to analyse, but it was an essential part of his job. The county was small, and the troopers understaffed.

“Sorry, Diana, I’m not.” He shook his head and turned to face his mother. In her late forties, she was youthful and attractive. Her hair was piled into a loose knot on top of her head, and her dark eyes were searching. “You might have noticed the big ‘Police’ sign when you walked into the building? You see, this is where I
work
. I can’t just take a break because a whim blew you by.”

She compressed her bright lips in disapproval. “I beg your pardon, Harrison Samson, you might be a grown man now but that doesn’t give you the right to sass me.”

His lips quirked into the closest thing to a smile he’d felt in days. Since Madeline had left his home, and he’d been tormented by hard, cold guilt at his actions. He’d taken her. He’d wanted her, and he’d taken her, even though he’d known it was wrong. She was someone else’s, but he’d stormed over his own objections, and hers, and he’d remembered how damn great they were.

Only she hadn’t objected.

And that made him feel worse. For some reason, if she’d fought against the attraction they still shared, he would have felt better. As though eight years apart had made sense.

But she’d fallen back into him, as though no time had passed. As though being with him was the only thing she cared about.

He suppressed a groan and tried to pay attention to his mother’s constant stream of information.

“… so I’ll be in the kitchen tonight, just helping out while Janice gets her leg seen to. Who would have thought a healthy twenty two year old could get arthritis?”

He nodded, though his interest was fading fast. “Uh huh. Yes. Terrible.” He looked longingly at his computer, actually keen to return to the stats.

“Harrison, you aren’t paying attention. What’s got into you?”

“Nothing!” He shrugged. “So you’re working at the diner tonight?”

“Yes. But I’ll still be able to have Ivy until your shift finishes. I’ll pick her up from school and bring her to the restaurant.”

“Thanks, Diana.”

She boxed his head playfully. “When did you stop calling me
mom
, huh?”

His smile was thin. “Is there anything else?”

She sighed in exasperation. “What the heck’s got into you?”

He picked a pen up and twirled it in his fingers, effortlessly pirouetting it from one finger to his thumb. Diana didn’t take her eyes from her son’s face.

“Did you hear that old man Bartlett’s sick?” He said, finally, not meeting his mother’s eyes.

She perched on the edge of his desk. “Yes. I did hear. What’s it to you, Harrison? What’s it to me?” Diana had loved Madeline as a daughter. But she could never forgive her for the way she’d treated Harrison. The poor man had been basically a child then. Twenty three with all his hopes bundled into that one girl. And she’d thrown those hopes in his face and fled, without so much as a backwards glance, even to make sure he was going okay. At least he had Ivy, though Diana knew he blamed himself for Sally’s death. Poor Harrison. Such a strong man, in many ways, but hurting so much too.