Ready & Willing (24 page)

She grew warm all over remembering. She wasn’t sure how it had happened or when, exactly, she’d realized he intended to kiss her. But she
had
realized what he was going to do, even before he’d lowered his head to hers. And she’d done nothing to keep it from happening. Because she’d wanted to kiss Nathaniel. Holding hands with him the way she had when they were together, as polite as her intentions had been in making the gesture, had reminded her of how good it felt to simply be close to another human being. Another
male
human being. She’d forgotten how important even innocent touches were when it came to feeling human. And she’d forgotten just how a man could make a woman feel by simply touching her. Like . . . a woman. It had been a long, long time since Audrey had felt that way. Too long.

Much, much too long.

So she’d done her best not to think about those touches with Nathaniel. Because they’d begun to feel less innocent with each new encounter. And she hadn’t thought about them. Until she and Nathaniel had been standing by the river, and the wind had nudged a strand of hair onto her cheek, and they’d both reached for it at the same time and gazed at each other at the same time, and then, suddenly, there was something arcing between them that hadn’t been there before, and she’d found herself wanting to see if . . .

Well. She’d just found herself wanting, that was all. And when Nathaniel had dipped his head to hers and kissed her, that wanting had turned quickly into needing. And then need had become demand. A blind, all-consuming, damn-the-torpedoes-and-full-speed-ahead demand. And then all she’d been able to think about was how close her house was, how they could be there in minutes and fall into her bed, how it would feel to lie naked beneath him, her legs wrapped around his torso as he drove himself inside her, deeper and deeper with every thrust, until they were both insensate with—

She closed her eyes and inhaled a shaky breath, pushing the thoughts back to the dark recesses of her brain where she’d tried to keep them contained. She had to stop thinking about Nathaniel the way she kept thinking about him. Because every thought like that felt like a betrayal of Sean. Rationally, she knew that wasn’t true. It was impossible to be unfaithful to Sean since she was no longer, technically, married to him. But Audrey’s marriage had never been technical. It had been emotional. It had been spiritual. It had been physical. Even without the license and the white dress and the ceremony, she would have been married to him. Because the way she had felt about him had made her married to him. Just because he was gone, that feeling didn’t change.

And even if she could find it in herself to have feelings for someone else, Nathaniel wasn’t the kind of man to fall in love. Not the way Audrey did. Not with one woman, ’til death did they part. Especially since, in her case, anyway, even death couldn’t put asunder what had been brought together.

She forced that thought, too, to the back of her brain, and focused on the task ahead. Smoothing one hand over her tailored blue shirt and khaki skirt, and the other over the tortoiseshell barrette she’d used to clip back her hair, she told herself to stop stalling and go inside.

When she did, she was immediately assailed by more forgotten memories. The incessant ringing of the phones, the unsteady thrum of voices, the sudden, unexpected burst of profanity. The glare of sunlight pouring through sooty windows, the unremarkable, government-issued furnishings, the acridly sweet aroma of industrial strength cleaner that could never quite mask the overripe smell of the detainees.

She held her breath as a maelstrom of impressions engulfed her, halfway expecting time and activity to come to a complete halt while she deflected them all, the way it might in the movies. But nothing stopped. Everything kept moving. The same way her life had since Sean’s death, no matter how many times she’d tried to stop, if only for a few seconds, so she might have just a moment, one tiny, itty-bitty moment, of peace.

She darted her gaze around the room, looking for Leo. Finally, she found him, sitting behind a battered desk in the corner of the room. He was standing with one hand on his hip, a telephone pressed to his ear. He’d gained some weight since his promotion, she saw, and he was a bit grayer on top. He was the physical antithesis of Sean, with dark hair and eyes and a build like a sparkplug, but she’d always thought him good-looking, in a rugged, backwoodsman kind of way. Out of uniform, though, and dressed in a nondescript brown suit and patterned tie, he’d been robbed of some of his charm. Then he smiled at something whoever he was talking to said, and the gesture lit his features in a way that reminded Audrey of the way he used to be, and that made her feel better. She had been right to come, regardless of how strange it felt to be here. Leo, she was sure, could help.

She picked her way across the squad room to his desk, but stopped a few feet away and remained silent while he finished his conversation. He’d turned by now and sat on the top of his desk with his back to her, gazing out the window at the buildings on the other side of the street. He murmured a few more questions, received a few more answers, then hung up the phone and turned to sit down in his chair. That was when he saw Audrey, and halted before completing the action.

“Audrey,” he said, his voice tinted with his surprise.

She lifted a hand in greeting. “Hey, Leo.”

He smiled at that and came around from behind the desk, pulling her into a fierce hug she was certain resulted more from his feelings for Sean than his feelings for her. “It’s good to see you,” he said as he held her. “How the hell are ya?”

“I’m good, Leo,” she said as she hugged him back, her response, too, stemming more from memories of how she’d felt when she saw him with Sean than how she saw him now. When they pulled apart, she added, “How’s Janet? How are the kids?”

“Good,” he told her. “They’re all good.”

What followed was a good ten minutes of getting caught up, not just with Leo’s family, but with mutual acquaintances they used to share, some of whom Audrey genuinely couldn’t remember, but pretended to, because it seemed important to Leo that she did. Finally, though, knowing she couldn’t have come because she wanted to revisit the past, he asked the question she’d been waiting to hear.

“So what can I do for you, Audrey?”

She chose her words carefully, not wanting to reveal any more than she had to about the situation—particularly the part where she’d have to tell Leo she was getting her information from a ghost who was haunting her house—and because what she was going to ask him to do might be a no-no if there wasn’t an official investigation into any wrongdoing. “I was hoping you could help me look into a matter that might, maybe, possibly have some criminal implications.”

His dark eyebrows shot up at that. “You involved in something you shouldn’t be, Mrs. Magill?”

He immediately looked contrite.
Mrs. Magill
was what both he and Sean had called her when they were kidding around, the way they’d called Janet
Mrs. Rubens
in the same spirit, and in the way Audrey and Janet had referred to their husbands as
Mr. Whatever
. “I mean . . .” he began. Then he halted abruptly, as if he wasn’t sure what to say.

“It’s okay, Leo,” she said. “I’m still Mrs. Magill.” Not sure why she did it, she added, “I’ll always be Mrs. Magill.”

He eyed her curiously. “Then you’re not . . .”

“What?”

“Seeing anyone?”

The question surprised her. It also flustered her. Mostly because the answer should be cut and dried—not to mention obvious—and it was clearly none of those things. Not even to Leo. Nevertheless, “Of course not,” she said. Sounding—oh, dammit—flustered.

“Oh,” he replied. But there was a note of puzzlement in his voice, and she wasn’t sure if it was because he’d picked up on the flustered part, or because he had thought she would answer differently.

Surely, it was the first, she told herself. How could Leo possibly think she might be seeing someone? Even if, in a way, she had kind of been seeing someone?

Telling herself to just drop it there, Audrey heard herself say anyway, “You sound surprised.”

He lifted a shoulder and let it drop, then leaned back in his chair in a way that was probably supposed to look careless, but didn’t really. “No, it’s not that. Just . . .”

“What?”

He shrugged again. And looked even less careless this time. “I don’t know. I just thought that by now . . . I mean, it’s been almost three years . . . And you’re so . . . And Sean wouldn’t have wanted . . .”

For some reason, Audrey’s back went up at that. “Sean wouldn’t have wanted what?” she asked, a little more crisply than she intended.

But instead of being offended by her tone, Leo smiled a sad, gentle smile. “He wouldn’t have wanted you to be alone, Audrey. Not for the rest of your life.”

She wasn’t sure how to respond to that, so she only said, “I like being alone.”

He didn‘t look convinced. As if to illustrate that, he asked, “Do you now?”

She nodded. “Of course. I was alone when I met Sean, wasn’t I?”

“You were,” he agreed. “In fact, Janet and I used to wonder what a rowdy extrovert like Sean could see in a straitlaced introvert like you.”

Now it was Audrey’s turn to smile sadly. “You’re not the only one. I could never really figure out what drew the two of us together, either.”

“It ended up being a good thing, though,” Leo told her. “You two rubbed off on each other in a good way. You brought Sean down to earth and smoothed his edge, and he brought you out of your shell.”

Audrey had forgotten about that. About how Sean had been prone to wildness and frat boy behavior when she first met him, and how she’d been a little too cautious and uncompromising. They really had been very different from each other in so many ways. But they’d managed to end up on common ground and stay tethered there together.

“Anyway,” Leo said, “I find it odd that some guy hasn’t snatched you up by now.”

“Some guy did,” Audrey said. “Sean Magill.”

Leo studied her intently for a moment. “So he did. And that guy wanted you to be happy,” he said softly.

“He did make me happy.”

Leo nodded. “Until the day he died.”

Audrey could guess where this was going, so she softly petitioned, “Leo, this isn’t . . .”

“He didn’t just want you to be happy while he was married to you,” Leo went on anyway, pointedly ignoring her. “He would’ve wanted you to be happy even after he died.”

“Leo . . .”

But Leo obviously didn’t intend to let up until he told her what he wanted—maybe even needed—to tell her. “He wouldn’t have wanted you to always be Mrs. Magill, Audrey. He would have wanted you to move on with your life.”

Still not sure what she should say, Audrey nevertheless objected halfheartedly, “Leo . . .”

“He would have wanted you to see other men.”

Okay, she
did
know what to say in response to that. “You can’t possibly know what you’re talking about, Leo.”

“Oh, can’t I?”

She shook her head.

He leaned forward over his desk, resting his arms on its surface, settling one hand over the other. She couldn’t help thinking he looked just like Ward Cleaver did whenever he was about to teach Wally and the Beave a lesson about life.

“Look, Audrey, when you’re a beat cop, you and your partner talk a lot. It gets boring driving around in a car all day. And what you talk about more than anything—even sports statistics, which I know will come as a surprise to women everywhere—is your family. And when you’re a cop, it’s always, always at the back of your head that every morning, when you say good-bye to that family, it could be the last time you ever see them.”

Audrey knew that. She knew that because, every single morning during her marriage, when Sean had kissed her good-bye, he’d done it with all the passion and Hollywood excess of a fabulous forties film. He could make that kiss on the beach in
From Here to Eternity
look like a quick peck on the cheek from great-aunt Edna.

“Sean and I both talked about what would happen to you and Janet if something happened to us,” Leo continued. “And we both decided, unequivocally, that if we ever went to that great doughnut shop in the sky, you should both move on.” He grinned. “After a proper period of mourning, of course. If either one of you ran off with some young buff rugby player named Serge the week after the funeral or something, we’d come back and haunt you but good.”

Audrey’s stomach knotted at that. If he had even an inkling . . .

“’Cause we knew that if anything happened to you or Janet, you’d want me and Sean to move on, too.” He hurried on, “After a proper period of mourning, of course. It’s not like we’d run off with some young, stacked cocktail waitress named Brandi the week after the funeral or something. We’d wait at least, oh . . . a month.” He grinned again, to let Audrey know he was kidding . . . mostly.

She said nothing for a moment, and just tried to digest what he’d told her. She could believe the two men talked about such things. And she could believe they both said what they had. But had they meant them? Or had it all been talk?

“Do you think Sean meant what he said?” she asked.

“That you should move on? Sure.”

“No, I mean the part about how he would move on.”

Leo hesitated only a moment, then nodded. “Yeah, Audrey. He did mean it. The same way he meant you should go on, too. Especially if it happened at a time when you—and he, for that matter—were young and still had decades of life ahead of you. It’s not right to expect someone to stay faithful to a ghost. Not when that person has such an incredible capacity to love. The way Sean did. The way you do.”

She started to say something else, but, honestly, she was so knotted up inside by now that she wasn’t sure what she was even feeling, let alone what she wanted to say. Leo seemed to understand, because after clearing his throat indelicately in a way that said,
Let’s move on
, he changed the subject.