The Perfect Husband - Lisa Gardner [66]
She caught him off guard with her sobs. He stood stiffly, stunned, then some old instinct flared gamely to life.
Slowly he curled one arm around her shoulders. She felt tiny against him. Carefully his other hand palmed her head. His thumb stroked her cheek once, twice.
“It will be all right,” he found himself whispering. “It’ll be okay.”
He brushed the tears from her cheek; he stroked her neck. She felt so unbelievably fragile. Images swamped him: A baseball bat arching up. A man arching the bat over her curled, defenseless body. A two-hundred-pound pumped-up giant about to annihilate his hundred-pound wife.
The rage was instantaneous. He blanked it from his mind and held her closer.
“You wanna talk about it?” he asked at last.
“I’m so humiliated,” she moaned.
“Why?” He shifted her more comfortably against his chest but kept his grip. He suspected the first time he let go, she would bolt.
“Because I’m a twenty-four-year-old mother and I don’t know how to kiss. And I don’t know what to do and I don’t know what to want. Oh, God, it’s all so messed up and crazy.” Her shoulders started heaving again.
“Your husband was your first?”
“The only one.”
“And lousy?”
“Yes.” Her arms slid around his waist and she clung to him. He hadn’t had anyone hold him like that for a very long time. He’d forgotten about these things. The sweetness of a woman’s touch. How much comfort she could give a man. How much she could make him feel whole.
And he felt something inside him rip a little.
He didn’t want that. Oh, he didn’t want that.
He took her hands in his and as fast and painlessly as possible disengaged her from his body. “You got time now,” he said stiffly. His gazed bounced all around, landing on everything but her. “Jim Beckett was a bastard and you left him. Now you got your whole life to figure out the rest. You’re starting out fresh and twenty-four’s not that old.”
“Was I that horrible?”
God, she was killing him. “No. No, Tess, you weren’t. You just . . . it’s like your shooting. You were trying too hard and bringing too many things into it with you.”
“Oh.” Her lips twisted. “So there’s a zone for kissing too? I should’ve figured that.”
“Yeah. You know those zones.”
“I bet you have them all down.”
“Not all of them. But shooting, swimming . . . fucking. Yeah, I guess I have my strengths.”
She fell silent. He used the opportunity to clear his throat. It felt too dry. He suffered another pang of longing for a beer. Any beer. Dirt-cheap beer, he didn’t care.
“We should get back to the house.”
“What are we going to learn this afternoon?”
“Hand-to-hand combat.”
“Not hand to baseball bat?”
He winced. “We’ll cover that too.”
More silence. Then she pulled away. “All right.”
He heard her footsteps as she moved over to the gun case. Heard the sharp clack as she popped it open, then the tinkle of shells being poured into their container.
He tried to pull himself together.
He kept seeing that damn Camaro. And his father walking down the hall.
He shook his head. Push it away, J.T., just push it away.
It didn’t work. He needed a beer.
FIFTEEN
I KNOW WHERE Jim Beckett is.” “Yes, ma’am?” “I’ve seen him in my dreams. He’s with a blond woman and there is the sound of dripping water. Slow dripping-water. Drip . . . Drip . . . Drip . . .”
“Ma’am?”
“I smell fresh snow and pine trees. Yes, he has gone to the mountains. The beautiful, beautiful mountains. There, he will be reborn.”
“Uh . . . yes, ma’am. Which mountains?”
“How should I know that, silly girl? You are with the police. I have given you direction, now you must follow!”
The phone clicked. The operator sighed. “Yes, ma’am,” she whispered. She hit the reset button on her keyboard and her terminal immediately lit up with a fresh call.
“I’ve found Jim Beckett!”
“Where, sir?”
“He’s living across the street from me. I spotted him last night, through the window. I broke my leg, see, but that doesn’t mean I’m helpless. Sitting at my window, I see all sorts of things.