In Your Arms: A Small Town Love Story (Safe Haven Book 1) (27 page)

Yup, getting along just fine.

Tonight she’d tell Adam about the swimming lessons she was taking at the pool in town. She wouldn’t tell him about the man she’d seen leaving the dressing room. The tall, dark-haired one with a similar physique to his. It had made her breath stop, until he turned and she saw the man wasn’t Adam, not even close, and she was able to breathe again.

She talked about him more with Lulah and Sally and could do that now without that hard rock of yearning clogging her heart. She looked at the phone. There were old voicemail messages on it from Adam. She had listened to one of them, once, and the ache it left in her was so overwhelming she hadn’t the courage to listen again. Still she couldn’t quite make herself delete them.

Not completely brave yet
.
Was there another relationship in her future? Would she ever be bold enough to open herself to a man? She couldn’t imagine that happening, feeling attraction and longing for another person the way she had for Adam. But one thing she knew, the dogs were no longer enough. Something large was missing.

At last, she was starting to understand her mother. Maybe Marlo’s father had been the true love of her life. Possibly, the pain of their parting had prevented her from ever discussing him with Marlo. She got that, too. It would have been so easy to shut off after Adam went. Lock his memory down in one of those steel boxes she found so easy to construct in her mind. But he didn’t deserve that…they didn’t deserve that, so these days he was totally up for discussion if anyone wanted to talk about him.

Maybe her mother had simply spent her life trying to recreate that love she once had, but within the string of men who came and went, the right one never turned up. You had to forgive a woman for trying, and that forgiveness was so good. Understanding liberated her and made her childhood less daunting, easier to manage.

She headed down to her office. She was expecting a trainer who specialized in teaching assistance dogs for people suffering PTSD. This guy’s main field was working with veterans suffering combat PTSD, and, if the meeting went well, they would start work with Vince and Calliope.

Now she needed to persuade Vince that it was a good idea.

A
ccepted
!
The precious work visa was granted. Adam struggled not to share the news with Marlo, because he had made a pact with himself that he wouldn’t jinx this. He laughed at his superstition, out of character, but he wanted this so badly it hurt.

In those wakeful middle-of-the-night moments when logic stayed asleep, small bursts of fear made him worry that maybe Marlo had found a boyfriend, a lover. Their relationship had ended with a full stop the size of a black hole. There hadn’t been a single hint or promise of a future together.
Once you go, it’s over.
God, he’d lived with those words echoing in his head for months now. Their familiarity never made them any easier to bear.

A
dam couldn’t believe
what he was hearing. “Please, Mum, I said no party, I really wanted to quietly slip away.”

His mother laughed. “Quietly slipping away is something old people wish for when they’re contemplating death.”

“Well, a party will kill me.”

“Now you’re being dramatic.”

“I mean it.”

His mother sighed. “Okay, no party. We’ll have a family dinner.”

J
udging
by the cars lining his parent’s driveway, his ‘family’ had grown some since the last dinner they’d had together. He had expected it would be himself, his parents and Clive and Karen. Instead, the place looked like a car sales yard. He contemplated going around the back, catching Clive’s attention and sneaking off with him, the way they had as teenagers during these events.

He would be home for holidays, and, since he’d accepted the job offer, he had promised the family—his mother, almost daily— that he would bring Marlo back to meet them as soon as he could. He hesitated on the porch, listening to the rumble of voices inside. This was
madness
.

If only he could ditch the unease. The farewell dinner, the questions about his new job, the hints about a new woman in his life…all these things made him feel as if he was gun-jumping on his future. And what was going on with these superstitious feelings?

He rubbed the back of his head, fixed himself a smile, and stepped into the house. Aunties assailed him with bosoms, beads, powdered faces, and bee-sting lips while uncles with ruddy cheeks stood back clutching beers.

Children had become surly teenagers since their last big gathering, and new children had arrived to play with the old toys. He was astounded, really, that he was blood-linked to the connecting people in this enormous group. When the realization hit him, he wondered why it had taken so long to appreciate how lucky he was.

Under similar circumstances, Marlo wouldn’t have had a single person at her side. Damn, he had to get her and show her all of this, make her part of it, too.

Suddenly the idea of not having this rowdy gang of people who spanned generations, this support network who were there for crises and celebrations, was fearsome. Was it any wonder Marlo had no idea how to ask for or accept help? God, he couldn’t bring her into the fold fast enough.

From outside came the aroma of the free-range pig turning slowly on the spit. In the kitchen, salads, vegetables, and freshly baked bread were dished onto enormous serving platters. As he relaxed into the scene, his earlier anxiety left him. Yeah, they could turn on comfort and a feast in the country.

He accepted a beer from a young lad, a cousin’s son—Tyler? Taylor?—who, before relinquishing his grasp on the bottle, asked if he could have a quick sip.

“Daddy lets me,” he assured Adam, the earnestness on his face doing a poor job of covering the lie.

Adam ruffled his hair. “Daddy would have my bal–brains on a plate if I let you do that.”

An inconsolable baby was passed around like a hot potato until its mother arrived to take it and feed. Clive appeared, and Adam nudged him in the ribs. “That’ll be you, soon, mate.”

“Wrong. That’ll be Karen. I don’t have the right equipment.”

“Fathers are just as involved these days, caveman.”

“I’ll take over when it’s time for quad-bike lessons and learning how to work a dog.”

Adam laughed. “We’ll see.”

When dinner finished, Adam’s father stood, hit his glass with his fork to summon some quiet, raising himself another inch before starting his speech. He said how proud he was of Adam and how much they would all miss him. Customary words from a man who never wasted them. Most of all he hammered in the fact that if Marlo wasn’t brought home to meet them all by the following Christmas, he’d be on a plane to haul them back.

Hell, no pressure
.

Adam scanned the room as he stood to reply, lucky and loved by the lottery of birth. The drive to show Marlo what a family could be roared through him like a rush of heat. As he faced his father to tell him of his gratitude, emotion dampened the heat so that, dammit, those lilies were making his eyes water. He shifted the vase, rubbed his forehead, thought of Clive, and raised his head to look his father in the eye.

“Dad?” Oh, God, Dad! He pushed through the stunned people to catch him before he hit the floor.

T
he waiting room
of the hospital Intensive Care Unit was familiar to Adam. He’d been in this same spot many times as a police officer, attending road accident victims, assault victims, victims of life in general, forced to behave as dispassionately as he could around the blank-faced, family members who gathered. For most of them, this environment was as foreign as a lunar landscape.

Being one of them didn’t feel great at all. He took his mother in his arms, and she held him tight. When she released him, he looked at the same staring eyes, that lost-look mask that people wore as they passed through the ICU waiting room doors. “He’s strong, Mum. He’ll pull through.”

She managed a tiny smile. “Yes, darling, I know.”

When they were finally allowed in to see him, they couldn’t tell where they could touch him. The light was low, and the tubes and wires made him look as if he were under attack from some sort of electronic jungle vine.

A doctor spoke to them in low, economical tones, and they nodded politely and agreed they should all get home to take some rest.

A couple of days on, angioplasty had cleared his father’s blocked arteries, but Adam knew the crisis wasn’t over. His father was mortal. The thought shocked him when it shouldn’t have. His mother would need his support, and if, God forbid, his father had a relapse…no, that didn’t bear thinking about.

He sat on the beach contemplating the certainty of the next wave rolling in versus the uncertainty of his future. He couldn’t leave the family in this mess. Not right now with his father unable to work for some time, and Clive and Karen with their baby on the way. They all needed his help and support.

Marlo. Fuck it. When was she going to get a break? At least he’d had the sense not to tell her about his return to the U.S. She had no idea he’d let her down, again. He found nothing harder to accept than a decision made for him.

Welcome to the other side.

He’d made a decision on Emma’s behalf that had ultimately led to her death. Why hadn’t he trusted her, been more upfront about the work he was doing? She would have understood. But he hadn’t wanted her to worry, so he’d hidden the bad stuff. Had she known he had infiltrated a local gang chapter she would have kept well away. She would have stayed at the farm that night rather than hurrying to him, to share the news of the baby they were going to have.

Instead, while he was out driving around the countryside to find the place the gangs were allegedly going to stage a dogfight, Emma had slipped in to the house he was renting, probably to surprise him, in bed. She’d done that before on other, safer jobs.

She must have fallen asleep, and, without smoke alarms, she would have been completely unaware the house had caught fire.

He got up and walked to the shoreline, picking up flat stones and trying to skim them through the waves. Not being honest with Em because he was trying to protect her was a bad, bad decision.

And all those decisions he’d made for Marlo had ultimately finished with Justice running loose in some Washington state park. If he was even alive.

No doubt about it, karma sucked.

He headed back to his cottage. He needed to shower and get up to the house for his mother.

His family saw the obvious solution for Marlo and him.
Bring her to New Zealand.
However, with the dogs this clearly wasn’t an option. Fala’s failing kidneys meant a long-haul plane trip would be intolerable. Marlo wouldn’t leave the U.S. while Justice was still at large, and, even if Justice was found, he couldn’t come to New Zealand. He was a pit bull, and they were a breed banned from importation.

CRAR told him the position didn’t need to be filled immediately, so the job was his if he wanted to reconsider it at another time. But Adam only had to take a quick look around, see the worry his mother wasn’t always capable of hiding, watch his father who was, for the moment, a shell of the man he used to be. He knew he wouldn’t be leaving the farm for some time.

He was back to medicating himself with long swims, made uncomfortable by the fact that when he closed his eyes he could see Marlo, floating in the lake. If anything, that little want was growing by the day.

W
hen Adam left the house
, the heavy scent of freesias and daphne struck him. Emma’s favorites. In spring she’d filled their house with so many vases of flowers that each evening he entered a perfumery when he came home. He let himself flounder for a moment in a memory of Emma and her flowers and her smile filled with simple, unblemished love.

In his mind, he paused at the door to their home—still and watching—the way he used to stop before entering the house when he was a cop, so that he could shed the work crap rather than bring it home. Now he was stuck at the doorway.

He went over to the garden shed, took a pair of secateurs, and cut a large bunch of freesias, tying them with some twine. As he went to return the secateurs, he passed a daphne bush and stopped to cut some of that, too. With the flowers secured he mounted the quad bike, kicked it into life and headed out to the main road.

Within thirty minutes, he was sitting at Emma’s grave. “Hey, Em, the freesias are out.” He filled the vase that wedged into the holder at the base of her headstone with water, and added the flowers. “Sorry, they’re a little battered from the bike trip.”

He fiddled about with them a bit more, trying to make them stand up straight, but they were uncooperative and disorderly. He gave the vase one last shake before setting it back in the ground. “And that, my darling, is why I left the flower arranging up to you.”

He sat on the ground and leaned against the headstone, took his knife from his pocket and started gouging a small spot in the ground. Within seconds, he was through the crusty top layer and the smell of damp earth filled his nostrils.

“Em, I made a terrible blunder once by holding out on you. If I had told you not to come and find me when I was away doing surveillance, I know you’d have stayed home. You would still be alive. For more than four years now, I’ve been beating myself up about it, unable to trust myself with the responsibility of anyone else’s welfare in case my job or my foolishness put that person in danger, too.

“That’s all changed, Em. I met someone in America, and she isn’t all accomplished and uncomplicated like you. She’s damaged and hurting; sometimes she’s brave and other times afraid. But most of all, she’s a very fine person.

“She’s helped me, given me someone to live for. And I’ve been able to help her a little. She let me help conquer some of her fears. I stuffed things up, too, which was good because that’s shown me that I can mess up and…” His heart thudded, giving momentum to his confession and, fancy developing allergies at his age because once again, those spring flowers were making his eyes water.

“Hell, Em, I messed up and nobody died. There you go, I said it.

“I’d reached the stage where I was too scared to become involved with anyone, because I didn’t want to put another life in danger. But her need caught hold of me. My own fears made me overprotective at first, and I really fucked things up so that she pushed me away.

“In doing that she’s brought me back, my old self, the person who’s able to stand right alongside and support the one I love.” I love? There we go.
“The panic is going…I’m starting to heal.”

He had picked a narrow tunnel a little wider and deeper than the blade of his pocket knife.

“Her name is Marlo. She blows me away.”

He stared at the hole now. It was almost dark, and, in the twilight, he took his time smoothing the edges of the little tunnel he’d dug. He reached into his top pocket and retrieved the piece of daphne he’d cut back at the farm. Freed from his pocket, the scent from the flowers was provocative, releasing a surge of memories which in the past would have distressed him but that he now found comforting.

With the knife, he divided the spray of flowers into two pieces, put one down the hole and the other into his top pocket. He slipped his wedding ring from his finger and rolled it between his palms. He studied it a moment, running his finger around the smooth, unadorned edge dragging in a few deep breaths to satisfy the hammering of his heart. He lifted the ring to his lips, kissed it, and dropped it down the hole with the daphne.

“’Til death us do part, Em. I’ll always love you.”

Quickly, before he lost his courage, he pushed the dirt back and filled the hole.

M
arlo entered
the house and paused. Total silence was way too quiet. Where was the
welcome home
sound of the discordant footfall of an arthritic dog walking on the slippery tiles?

“Fala?” she called, and the lack of response made the point of alarm in her chest expand.

She headed for the patio. Recently Fala seemed to not so much sleep as to fall into a semi-coma. She probably hadn’t heard Marlo come home. There she lay in a shady spot, her perfect stillness causing Marlo to step slowly.

She had her eyes stretched wide, as if that would improve her vision as she watched for the rise and fall of the dog’s chest. Relief arrived with the dog’s one long drawn breath, one deep exhalation, and return to the stillness.

She crouched and stroked the dog’s head, trying to rouse her gently. Fala’s eyes opened, and her tail gave a barely perceptible thump. She raised her head with gathered effort but soon placed it back on the ground as Marlo stroked her.

“You don’t look so good, sweets. Come on; let’s see if you’ll stand up.”

Despite the encouragement, Fala was reluctant to stand. She turned her head away from the offer of a much-favored liver treat, and, when Marlo checked her gums, she could detect a slight ammonia-like odor to her breath. Kidneys. Hell.

When she went to get her phone, she noticed the water bowl. An old dog with chronic kidney disease had to drink, and that water didn’t appear to have been touched all day. She called the vet surgeon and was relieved Jeff hadn’t closed up and would keep himself available for them.

It took some effort to roll the old dog onto her blanket, gather it up and carry her out to the car. She had to set her down to unlock the vehicle, but Fala just lay quietly, unmoved by the events. Opening the SUV, she placed her in the back, making sure the dog was lying comfortably. Once in the driver’s seat, she took a few seconds to compose herself. She was remarkably calm, in an almost surreal state until she turned the key in the ignition and heard the small click that suggested nothing else was going to happen. In disbelief, she turned the key forward and back several times before believing the click. It took two seconds for her mood to switch from calm to chaos.

She dug in her bag for her cell and made a call to the barn, praying that someone with a vehicle was still around. Lulah finally answered and said that Vince would be on his way up to take them to the clinic.

Jeff met them in the parking lot and helped Vince carry Fala straight through to the surgery. After blood and urine screening, he confirmed Marlo’s fears that Fala was suffering acute renal failure. She was severely dehydrated, her potassium levels were dangerously high and slowing her heart. IV fluid therapy would hopefully restore good hydration and flush out the toxins that her kidneys should have been removing from the bloodstream.

Marlo sat on the floor by the cage and stroked Fala’s ears as she lay quietly, the IV drip in her right leg, her eyes closed, her breathing still slow. “Ears like velvet, Fala.”

Jeff stood over her. “I won’t lie to you, Marlo, her kidneys have been compromised for some time now and even with rehydrating her, she’s not out of trouble by any means.”

“Sure, I understand.”

“Are you okay? Can I get you anything?”

“No, I’ll sit with her a bit if that’s all right.” She continued stroking Fala, running her hand over her head and down her body, feeling all the familiar bones and bumps. She smoothed her thumb over the scar on Fala’s leg that she’d gotten when she’d cut herself on some old tin concealed in long grass at the edge of the forest.

The stress of finding her sick, the car not starting, and the concern that she wouldn’t get Fala help in time had left her so that now she felt numb around the edges, hollow inside. “You can’t leave me, girl. There’s been too much leaving go on around here lately. I need you to stay. Promise me you’ll stay.” She stilled her hand, and waited but Fala didn’t respond. She crouched over her and kissed the top of her head. “Rest up for a bit. I’ll be back soon.”

Back in the waiting room, Vince sat perched on the edge of a bench seat, looking as if he thought the place would implode if he moved. The guy needed to learn how to relax, because being edgy with that many tattoos was intimidating.

He stood when he saw her. “How’s Fala?”

“She’s on IV fluids and stuff, so there’s nothing more we can do for her at this stage. It’s up to her now. Up to that little body of hers to take up the fight. I’m not thinking about anything beyond her getting better.”

Vince reached out to touch her arm and pulled back.

Neither of them were any good at the comforting thing. “Don’t feel you have to hang around for me. I can walk back or get a lift back from Jeff.” She was trying to be considerate, but he looked as though she’d slapped him.

“I’d like to wait…if that’s okay.”

It was easy to see he thought she was going to need some support, and she hoped with all of her heart that it wouldn’t be necessary
.
“Thank you, Vince. Would you like a glass of water or coffee?”

“No, I’m fine.”

She’d never met anyone so undemanding. He seemed to go through the world making as little impact as possible. Well, apart for the visual impact. “How’s Calliope?”

“She’s great.”

“Where is she now? Do you need to get home to her?”

He hesitated as he shifted on his seat a little before answering. “She’s with Lulah,”

“Well, she’s in good hands.” Marlo smiled at him, and he answered with a smile that seemed filled with relief.

A
s Adam drove
down the drive, a flood of memories, good ones, rolled and cascaded around his head. He was sucked dry from the non-stop flight to LA and the rush of having only an hour to catch the connection to Seattle. Common sense said he should have grabbed a hotel for some sleep and set off for Dog Haven Sanctuary in the morning. But his mother had stopped him from listening to common sense, and a son should always do as his mother asks. Thank you, Mum.

He parked alongside Marlo’s SUV. The back was up and the driver’s door open. She must be heading out
.
He went to the open front door of the house and called to her. There was no response. He smiled as he passed the wall in the entrance where he’d made her blush. Did she blush when she passed by here? He called out again, not so loud this time because that unease creeping through him said he already knew he was talking to an empty house.

Fuck, surely not Barrett.

His heart stepped up, ready to redline as he ran back to her car. The key was in the ignition; he turned it and heard the click that signaled a dead battery.

Slow down. Think.

She’d left here with some sort of urgency. Otherwise she’d have taken the keys with her, and she would have at least shut the front door. He returned inside the house. Fala was missing, too. The phone was on the counter, as if a call had been hastily made. He picked it up and checked the last number dialed. The vet. There must be something wrong with Fala.

When he left the house, he shut the front door. As he was about to retrieve the keys from the SUV, he heard something moving about in the shrubs. It sounded large.
Wishing for a weapon now.

He slid along the side of the car, keeping a steady fix on the moving bushes and saw a flash of fur. A dog? Fala?

He stepped toward the garden, and the moving bushes told him the animal was heading away. “Fala, come on, girl.” The bushes moved again. The dog had turned and seemed to be crawling its way toward him. “Fala?”

The dog stepped out of the shrubs and crouched at the edge of the garden and rolled to its side, exposing his belly.

Justice. “Come here, let me look at you.”

He had regressed to his pancake impersonations, creeping slowly, belly close to the ground. But when Adam crouched, Justice raised himself and ran at him, hitting him side on, knocking him to the ground in a mass of wriggling body, wagging tail, and frantic licking.

It took a couple of minutes to get Justice to settle. “You’ve just arrived, haven’t you?”

Justice sat, his tail thumping, and he made low whimpering and snuffling sounds. By the state of his condition, he obviously hadn’t been a very successful hunter. He had a thick strip of hair missing from one shoulder that looked as if he may have glanced off a moving vehicle, but apart from other minor scrapes, he looked pretty good.

Adam stood, and Justice settled himself against his legs, leaning in, stretching his head and neck up Adam’s leg, and giving him an open-mouthed, hanging-tongued gaze of adoration.

Adam reached for the dog’s head and gave him a solid rub. “Into the car with you, buddy. You’re going to make two females very happy.”