The Man From Her Past (12 page)

But Hope reminded him of the five years that separated the love he craved from the life he could expect. After valiantly keeping up all night, Hope decided she could no longer walk and sing at the same time. She searched for her mom, who’d stopped to speak to her former high school English teacher. Van started toward her.

Hope dragged her hand out of Leo’s. She was hand-over-handing up the front of Van’s coat when Jonathan Barr approached, wearing a smirk totally out of context with the song of “Good King Wenceslas.”

An “Ah, at last I see the truth about you and Cassie” smirk.

Van’s first instinct was to set Hope safely out of range and deck the guy. He searched for Cassie among the crowd now cheerfully singing for the medical staff hanging out of windows at Honesty General.

She’d already seen him—and apparently Barr, as well. She sidled between the other carolers, shaking her head until she got between him and Barr.

“No,” she said.

“No what, Mommy?”

“Nothing, baby. You like hanging out with Mr. Van?”

“Why don’t you go to your mom for a second? I see someone I have to talk to.”

“You don’t.” Cassie put her hands behind her back. “You think you have no choice, and if you didn’t—well—I’d be sorry.”

He didn’t realize he was trying to dance around her until she cut off his access to Barr, who was now laughing. Idiot. How he’d kept his job in the bank was a mystery to Van. He’d never become president, but he must have something on every member of the board to stay employed, considering he lacked compassion or simple human decency.

“Van, no one’s in danger. He thinks he’s solved a riddle. What do we care?”

“I still need to shove his teeth down his throat.”

“Bad man?” Hope twisted to see who they were talking about. “Like that man at home, Mommy?”

“Just a not-very-nice man.” Cassie begged him with her eyes to stop.

“I forgot you knocked someone down,” he said.

“I thought I had to.”

“Then you understand.” But he’d lost the will to fight. “I still don’t get what you were doing, taking on a man.” That wasn’t his Cassie, and he’d been too shocked when he first heard the story to demand an explanation.

“He busted into the shelter with a big metal tube. I thought he might kill someone, and…” Her gaze drifted to Hope. “Other people were there. I had to do something, but I feel sick when I think about it. I took classes after we moved to Tecumseh. But how could I think violence was a good choice?”

Hope reached for him and when he took her, she dropped her head onto his shoulder.

“No one needs violence here.” Cassie watched Barr fade into the crowd. “I gave my daughter the idea that fighting was all right.”

“Fighting
back
sometimes has to be,” he said, and then wished he hadn’t as she glanced at Hope with worry in her eyes. “Don’t be afraid of what’ll happen if you stay here.”

Her intense expression showed he was right. Hope might have plenty to fight about if the parents of Honesty’s toddlers didn’t watch their tongues. She shook her head and focused on her little girl’s limp body in his arms. “You look tired to me, Hope.”

“No.” She yawned as wide as the Grand Canyon to prove it.

“Let’s find Grampa. Where do you think he rambled off to?”

“I’ve been watching,” Van said, only just aware he’d kept Leo’s longish gray hair and blue wool overcoat in sight. “He’s by the pizzeria sign.”

“Don’t go far.” After a few minutes, Cassie brought her father back and they wove through laughing groups of impromptu singers to Van’s car.

“This was fun,” Leo said, as Cassie helped Hope with her seat. “Like old times.”

“Dad.” On automatic, she resisted her father’s ongoing matchmaking.

“I’m not saying I wish we could have the old times again.” He turned up his collar and burrowed in. “You remember how awful they were.”

As if bidden by Leo’s teasing sarcasm, a memory of another Christmas appeared in Van’s head. His and Cassie’s first kiss, almost an accident beneath the mistletoe in her front hall. He’d touched his lips to hers and started to raise his head, but she’d cupped his nape, drawing him closer, changing forever from a friend into the woman he loved.

It had been that simple.

Then.

“Van?”

She’d turned up in the passenger seat beside him. He stared at her, still half in the past. Her mouth curved, and he remembered the taste of her.

“Van,” she said, a note of warning in her voice. She glanced at her father and Hope, clearly to see if they’d noticed the undercurrents in the front seat.

“Sorry.” He checked the traffic and pulled onto Square Court. Slowly, they inched around to the road that led to the lake and Leo’s house.

By the time he pulled alongside the curb, he’d reined in his errant heartbeat and schooled his breathing into an even rhythm.

Still, he took a lungful of the frozen air outside. Like some lovesick kid, he marveled at ice sparkling on the bare branches and moonlight dusting the streets and houses in an extra translucent layer of light.

“It looks like Santa’s coming,” he said as Cassie eased her daughter out of the car.

“She’s asleep.”

“I’ll carry her.” Leo reached for her.

Cassie turned her hand over and held her father off, but the gentleness in her touch pulled Van like an invisible cord. “I’d like to let you, but she’s a big girl. You still have to get steadier on your own feet first.”

“You’re brutal, young lady.”

“Because Hope and I are staying, and I don’t want you to take caring for her for granted.”

“You’re staying?” Over the top of the car, he stared at her, his eyes full of gratitude. In the lamplight, his eyes glittered. Van felt like a Peeping Tom. Leo tapped the car roof. “I’m so glad, Cass.”

She smiled, her effort valiant. “Me, too, Dad.” She started up the sidewalk. “You coming in, Van?”

How many times had he fabricated an excuse to come over since she’d arrived back home? “Sure.” He let her get most of the way to the porch before he punched the button to lock his doors.

They went inside before him. When Van entered, Cassie had carried Hope upstairs and Leo was still taking off his coat in the hall. Van helped him.

“I’m tired, man. I’m going up to bed, too. Will you be all right on your own until Cassie comes back down?”

Van hung his and Leo’s coats in the closet. “Sure. You’re not setting us up again?”

“Nope. Too tired, and besides, they’re staying. Did you hear Cassie tell me they’re staying?”

“I heard, but Leo, don’t read more into it than you should. Ask her how long she’s staying before you assume anything.”

“Forget it.” Leo laughed off Van’s caution. “But I’ll lay off my subtle effort to get you two back together. Suddenly, we have more time to persuade her she should stay home for good.”

He turned and started up the stairs, wobbling as if he might tumble backward any second.

“You should have said you were tired.”

“I had work to do.” He leaned on the banister for several seconds. “But I am exhausted. And sometimes, I think I’m hanging on by a thread. I’m going to bed now before I do anything that will make Cassie think…”

He finished, but Van couldn’t understand what he meant, and stopping him again seemed pointless. Van was still staring at the empty landing when Cassie came to it.

“Where’s Dad?”

“He went to bed. Did he seem normal to you?”

She leaned over and lowered her voice to match his tone. “I can’t hear you.”

He waved her down and met her at the foot of the stairs. “Did he seem okay?”

“I don’t know. He’s pretty obvious about wanting us back together.” She pointed to the living room and they went inside. She shut the door behind them. “Even Hope wants to know if you’re my boyfriend.”

“After such a good evening together—all of us—that disgusted tone hurts.”

She lifted her head, shaking back her hair. He sifted a few strands through his fingertips. She pulled away, rubbing her hands down her arms. “You assume you know what I’m thinking.”

“The way you assume I don’t feel anything. That’s what bothers me.” He searched her eyes, but she looked away. “Maybe you don’t feel anything,” he said.

“You know better.”

He could barely hear her. He felt as if he was hallucinating.

“Maybe I wanted you to stay tonight,” she said.

I
T WAS LIKE
falling off the side of a building. With only words, she’d knocked the breath out of him. “I don’t want to make any more mistakes. What are you saying, Cass?”

She swung away from him. The room’s light seemed to go with her. And all his hope, as well.

“I wonder if we might as well give in.”

Standing with her back to him, she hid her expression, but she also avoided seeing the hurt he couldn’t hide. He dragged his hands over his face.

“Give in to what?”

“Dad. Obviously, Jonathan Barr. Everyone in this town who assumes you’re Hope’s father, and that I’ve come home to you as well as to my dad.”

“Give in?” He looked for his coat, and then remembered he’d put it in the closet. Besides, he’d be a fool to walk out without answering her. He turned her around. “You think I want you that way? Because you’re tired of fighting your family and the people who’ve loved you all your life?”

“Jonathan Barr? The man’s a gossip who loves nothing and no one better than a juicy tidbit he can spread to any slob who has to beg him for a loan.”

“Yeah—your father would have done the town a favor if he’d fired him, but you’re not doing him a favor by taking me on.”

A shiver started deep in the core of her. He felt it before it shook her body in his hands. She closed her eyes, but then she opened them again, and she looked like the woman who’d blamed him for not loving her.

“I’m afraid.”

“Stop it,” he said. “I want to stay angry, because you’d let someone else decide if you and I can be together. You could pretend I matter so little to you.”

She came to life. It snapped in her eyes as she curved her hands around his wrists. “I care. What I said about giving in was stupid—because I’m afraid.”

“How can you not want me back? Deep down, it’s all I’ve wanted since the day you left.”

“Even now, when you know I’m different?”

“I want to know if I can love you still—if we can love each other.”

She shook her head, hard, and he saw Hope in the strands of hair twisting around her face. “We were a family tonight, and I wondered if I turned my back on my one true love. Five years too late. You think that’s not frightening?”

Her hands held him helpless. Unable to move because he wanted her to let go of his wrists and wrap herself around him.

“Cassie, it’s like before. You’re scared of the wrong things.”

“I’m not the same, and you’re looking for the woman who left you.”

“Cass.”

Even he heard his gut-deep need. “I want you back.” Her smile was food to him. Her eyes were a sight of the future, of possibilities and love that had abandoned him.

“No.” She let him go and she started to move away.

He reached for her. Just in time, he remembered to be gentle. Her shoulders felt too slender, the muscles taut, not his wife’s, yielding with love.

She turned her head to hide from him again.

“Do you want me to leave?”

She didn’t answer, and he saw the truth. She wasn’t certain.

Keeping one hand on her shoulder, he used the other to ease her hair off her face. He brushed the pads of his thumbs over her cheekbones, sharper than even the last time he’d kissed her.

“You had your chance,” he said. “I would have gone.” He lowered his mouth to her soft skin.

Her scent hadn’t changed, sweetness and spice and everything he knew that made a woman a woman. He kissed the hollow beneath her cheek, and her intake of breath made him dizzy.

He wasn’t alone. She needed him, too.

He pulled her close, laughing as her heartbeat fluttered against his chest. She turned her face up, and he kissed her.

He wanted to destroy her with wanting, let the fire that burned inside him lick through her veins.

Instead, it was like before she left. He couldn’t stop remembering.

He was afraid of hurting her. He didn’t want to remind her of that other man—that bastard he should have killed.

Van pulled away, swearing, without realizing what Cassie would think. She stared, horror in her eyes.

“I told you,” she said. “It’s too late. Why don’t you go?”

“No. I won’t leave, and you’re going to hear me.” He tugged her into his arms. “I need you the way I always did—so much, I’m afraid of hurting you.”

He wrapped his arms around her, wary as he felt the outline of her ribs. She’d never gained back the weight she’d lost after the rape.

He pushed those pictures out of his head and grabbed for the other times, fumbling with the sparkling buttons on her wedding dress, breathing through the fall of her hair as she’d leaned over him in their bed, holding his breath as he’d waited for her satisfaction to mount with his.

With a groan, he speared his fingers through her hair and opened her mouth with his thumb. They kissed, two hungry people who each needed to be in charge. Later—later, she could have her way. Just now, he had to show her he still wanted his own. He still wanted her.

He traced the lines of her face with his mouth, learning her anew. Again and again, he returned to her mouth, until kissing her wasn’t enough.

She caught his hands at the hem of her T-shirt.

“Wait.” Her breath cut the air around them. “Hope and Dad are upstairs.”

“Mmm-hmm.” He took her mouth again. “I can’t stop. Don’t make me stop, Cassie.”

“We have to.” She brought their hands between them. When his knees threatened to buckle, she let him go and slid her arms around his waist.

“The floor,” he said, finding her earlobe, letting his teeth caress her. “We’ve made love there before, and I remember how to lock the door.”

She burrowed into his chest, and he held her up for a moment, but she flattened her palms against his stomach.

“I can hardly breathe, Cassie.”

“I don’t want to stop, either, but I’m Hope’s mom, and she’s never seen me with someone.”

“I’m not someone. I was your husband.”

“You’re Mr. Van to her.” She pushed her hand into his hair, and her skin clung to moisture.

He wanted her so badly he’d broken into a sweat. Laughing, he pressed his lips to the pulse pounding in her wrist. “You’re driving me crazy.”

“I like you this way better. You acted as if you could barely stand touching me.”

He had to see her eyes. “I’m not a subtle man. You must be blind.”

She shuddered. “I wish things were different,” she said without looking at him.

“Okay, Cassie.” He kissed the top of her head, lingering with his cheek against her hair, but not wanting to push. “I’m going home.”

“You have to.”

Her relief was almost as forceful as the desire that had choked them both. He looked back at her as he went to the door. Emotion seemed to bend her as she reached for the nearest chair.

He wanted to return, but if he touched her again, how would he leave? “You’re not afraid of making love with me, are you?”

“No.” Her eyes never shifted from his, and he tried to blame his doubt on the habits of five years.

“M
OMMY
,
IF
M
R
. V
AN IS
my daddy, why doesn’t he live with us?”

If Van was her daddy? She must have heard it at school. Cassie couldn’t say he wasn’t, so she backpedaled. She scanned the produce section, but they were nearly alone tonight in the market. Another snow had kept most sensible people indoors. “You know moms and dads sometimes live apart.” She put a tomato in the plastic bag Hope was holding out. “We’ve seen a lot of that at home.”

“But those fathers wanted to hurt the mommies and the children. Did Mr. Van hurt you once upon a time?”

She smiled at Hope’s idea of the past. It was always “once upon a time” for her. “Never. Mr. Van would never hurt anyone.”

“He doesn’t love us?”

“I think he loves you. He and I can’t live together.”

“Nope. I don’t unnerstand.”

“Me, either, but let’s be friends with Mr. Van, and someday, you’ll have a daddy like any of your friends.”

“Will he live with us?”

“When you have a daddy, he’ll live with us.” She put another tomato in the bag, and they closed it together, Hope twirling it and then handing it to Cassie to knot.

“Will he love me, Mommy?”

“Baby.” Cassie knelt beside her. To the strains of a tinny “White Christmas,” she hugged her daughter so tight Hope grunted. “Everyone with any sense at all loves you.”

“Okay, but you’re squishing me.”

“C
ASSIE
, I’
VE HEARD
about your shelter. I saw you speak at a conference in Maryland two years ago.”

“I wish you’d spoken to me.” Knowing Allison Blaine, director of the state-run women and children’s shelter in her hometown, had been in that audience seemed odd. “I haven’t seen that many friends since I left.”

“I’m not sure when I last had an actual vacation to visit friends.” Something on her computer screen made her jot a note on a small yellow pad. “Must be the same for you. I’m sorry your father’s illness had to be the thing that brought you back.” She looked up. “Sorry about the e-mail. I’m sure you understand how busy I am.”

“That’s why I’ll cut to the chase. I need a job while I’m here.”

A tone rang on the computer, and Allison’s attention split to the screen again. “How long do you plan to stay?”

“That’s open-ended. I won’t pretend this is a permanent change, but I could ease your workload around here.”

“We always welcome new volunteers, and I’m in the process of requesting funding for a new position, but I’ve been budgeting for a full-time, permanent person.”

Cassie regarded the serviceable oak desk, clearly a castoff from a schoolteacher’s classroom. The filing cabinets, four across, were each a different primary color, obviously hand painted. The building itself creaked with the footsteps of each inhabitant.

Full-time. Permanent.

“I’m not just saying this because I need the job, but I could be here on a permanent, full-time basis.” Cassie gripped her chair’s arms. “I’m not sure what’s happening with my father, but I may not be able to leave.”

“And you wouldn’t mind being an employee after you ran the shelter in Washington?”

“Even if I did mind, the job matters more than who gives the orders. And I need work.”

“My sister told me you’re looking for a nurse.”

“Jill works for the Caring Heart service?”

“You knew she was a nurse?”

“I remember.”

Allison drew a line under her last note and scribbled another. “Would you be able to work full-time hours with your father’s needs?”

“Right now he needs someone to check on him at mealtimes to make sure he’s eating, maybe once or twice during the workday to make sure he has what he needs. His care will eventually change, but he seems to be improving with us there.”

Allison capped her pen and turned the monitor, as if to remove herself from its temptation. “Let’s take a look around the place.” She shared the wry smile of a colleague. “See if you’re still interested after you see the extent of
our
needs.”

Cassie’s relief was a lump in her throat. It wasn’t just the money. She needed to do something worthwhile, and she and her father hadn’t lived together in over a decade. They both needed an occasional break. He’d already begun to turn back into his room and pretend he had vital business if she passed him to take laundry to the linen cabinet or stopped to ask if he needed anything.

A short tour brought her and Allison back to the other woman’s office. “As you can see, we’re not as state-of-the-art as you,” she said.

“No one is state of any art in this work, but we’ve done a lot of private fund-raising and we’re not bound by state rules.”

“You’re still interested if we get the position?”

Cassie nodded. If only the rest of her decisions were so clear. “What kind of time frame are you looking at?”

“We’re close. I’d say no more than a month.”

Cassie picked up her purse and the dark green folder in which she’d carried her résumé. “That sounds good. I’m still settling my dad.” She rubbed her temple. “Although he’d say he was settling me.”

“My parents are the same, and they’re hale and hearty.” Allison extended her hand. “I’m glad you came in. We need your experience. I was looking at extensive training for whomever we hired, so maybe I’ll be able to work a little more into your salary. You know, Cassie, if you needed to bring your father into the center every so often, that wouldn’t be a problem. We could use the influence of a good man. The children we see haven’t been exposed to someone like Leo Warne.”

“Thanks, Allison. I needed to hear that. He’s different.”

“Losing a parent, even over time, is terrifying. Who wants to be your father’s parent?”

“And what father wants to admit that’s happening?”

They shook hands, a commiserating smile giving Cassie the feeling they’d bonded. Since she’d returned, she’d known sharp, infrequent moments when she felt she’d come home. It was a peculiar side effect to interviewing for a job.

“Have you seen much of Van?” Allison asked.

Two nights ago came back like a memory that wanted to be relived.

“
You’re not afraid of making love with me, are you?
” he’d asked.

“My father still considers him family,” Cassie said, unable to find any other answer.

“We’re that kind of a town. No chance to put an ex-spouse behind you.” Allison led her into the hall.

“You don’t have to walk me out.” She couldn’t face any more talk of Van. “I remember the way.”

“Good. Then we’ll speak when I hear on my funding.”

Allison returned to her business day, but she’d destroyed Cassie’s brief, false sense of security.

She left the shelter, her arms around her waist, remembering Van’s strength. Fear beat again in her throat, unexpected, unwished for.

Making love with him long ago had been as right, as easy, as breathing. She’d longed for him to hold her the old way, heedless of anything except their need for each other. But as desire had replaced the gentleness of his touch, she’d searched the darkness behind her closed eyes for escape.

Van had left her mind, and that other being had taken over. How would she open herself to any man? The rape hadn’t been sex, but somehow sex had become dangerous, even when it was an act of intimacy she deeply wanted with Van.