Her Perfect Match (3 page)

She didn’t know, and when she reached the barn it turned out she couldn’t divert her thoughts with a visit with Cole. He’d left for his office, having put Georgie Burk in charge of Morning. After a short visit with the sweet-natured mare and older man who’d been at Laurel Glen for years, Elizabeth set out for her car. She’d spent a lot longer than expected riding, which was why she’d jumped the fence. Cutting the few minutes it would have taken to ride around the other stables and barn had seemed worth it, but she hadn’t picked up any time after all, thanks to being held up by Jack Alton’s lecture. Consequently, she was even later for work at the women’s shelter than she would have been if she’d stopped to open the gate!

Nearly everyone assumed she worked at New Life Inn as a volunteer, but it was more for her now—she was getting paid for her work. With her parents’ finances collapsing, Elizabeth had finally taken a stand against her father and his demand that she not work for a living. He found it embarrassing. And as always, she found his attitude positively Victorian.

With Meg Taggert for a role model, Elizabeth had broken out of the mold and set out on her own personal road to independence. It was such a good feeling to unlock the door to her office, to go to the bank and cash a paycheck instead of withdrawing from her trust fund, to see a woman she’d help make a fresh start. It was fulfilling.

Hurrying to where she’d parked, Elizabeth turned the corner next to Stable Four and smacked straight into a wall of damp chambray that covered what felt like several square feet of stone hard flesh. Gasping, she stepped quickly back, lost her balance and found herself sitting in the grass.

The way her day had gone so far Elizabeth didn’t know why she was surprised when she looked up and found Jack Alton smirking at her, but she was.

“You really need to watch where you’re going,” he drawled, offering her a hand up.

“And you don’t?” she’d demanded. Scrambling to her feet, Elizabeth ignored his hand.

“I’m not the one with the grass stains all over her, ah, seat, am I?”

Elizabeth felt her face heat. The baboon had actually mentioned—“Only because you’re a big oaf,” she said through carefully gritted teeth and then continued icily. “I wouldn’t have thought Ross Taggert would be so careless about the kind of people he hires after what your predecessor put the family through.”

Jack’s eyes abruptly narrowed and blazed like twin lasers. “Are you comparing me to Donovan? Their old foreman? The one in jail for burning down Stable
Four and for murder? The man who tried to kill Amelia Taggert?”

There might be something about Jack Alton that had her pulse skittering all over the place whenever he was around but, no, she didn’t think there was any comparison between him and Harry Donovan. It was just that Jack was so irritating!

“Not necessarily,” she said, giving him her best frozen glare and backing down only a little, “but I’d say the verdict is still out on what you’re doing at Laurel Glen. You could say I don’t believe in coincidence. And neither does Cole, by the way.”

As parting shots went, Elizabeth thought as she slid into her car and cranked the engine to life, that had been right up there with Clark Gable’s famed last line of
Gone With The Wind.

Jackson stood staring after Elizabeth as she tore down the access road toward the entrance arch. That Cole was suspicious wasn’t a news flash. But Jackson’s ridiculous attraction to Elizabeth would be quite a news flash to the people back home in Colorado. Everyone knew Jackson Alton gave women a wide berth these days and had for the last three years.

Unfortunately, he wasn’t as surprised as they would be that he was feeling the way he was. Because he knew what drew him to Elizabeth. She was a beautiful woman and all wrong for him, so it stood to reason he’d be drawn to her—his track record being what it was. There was also no reason not to acknowledge, at least to himself, that he was attracted to her. But
there was every reason for him to avoid her like the plague.

She was wealthy, beautiful and involved with his cousin. The fact that theirs was apparently a relationship Jackson could never countenance only proved she was not the kind of woman for him. Besides that, only a fool would repeat a mistake.

He probably wasn’t the first guy to be disappointed by a woman, but he had such a long history of romantic blunders. He was forever picking women who wanted different things from life than he did. Women who could never understand the joy he found in hard work or watching a foal come into the world. Women who would never share his faith. The trouble with all his missteps was that each time it happened everyone on the Circle A and in town had known and had felt sorry for him. And that was hard on a man’s pride.

Feeling suddenly desolate and alone, Jackson walked to the pasture fence and gazed over Laurel Glen’s green fields with their crisscrossing fences. He closed his eyes and sighed. He hadn’t spoken to the Lord in weeks. Not since finding out his whole life had been a lie. He hadn’t felt God’s presence at the little church he’d gone to the Sunday before.

Lord, I’m sorry that we haven’t been talking. I feel so alone without You. I guess I’ve been a little resentful, finding out something like this all of a sudden. I hope You understand what I’m doing here. I just want to find the kind of connection with these people I have with You.

Help me do the right thing. Show me the best way to approach my mother. And Lord, about Elizabeth, could You send a little strength my way before I make an idiot of myself over her?

E
lizabeth pulled into the last parking spot available and looked at the quaint row of stores that formed the center of the little town of Village Green. She loved the historic village with its high wooden sidewalks and eclectic mix of shops. Reaching for calm, she sat for a heavenly moment and let the cool wind blow through her windows. The lovely summer day had been washed clean of humidity and summer’s excess heat by a cold front and an accompanying thunderstorm. The light show and dousing had just ended, so the air was as perfect as the quiet moment.

The booming thunder and flashing lightning had been nothing compared to the fireworks she and her mother had created not long before at home. But she’d triumphed, and it felt good. Lance Goodwin Bond would not come to call at her door unannounced the way he had last night with an impression—cour
tesy of her mother—that he was expected and welcome.

One battle won.

Sighing and giving up on finding any more serenity, Elizabeth climbed out of her low-slung car then leaned in to grab her purse and the sack of letters she’d come to mail. Sometimes she got so tired. Her life had been a series of battles both personal and parental since the day Jason Lexington tore her life to shreds. Why she went on hoping it would change, Elizabeth didn’t know. But she had a feeling happiness and contentment were anyone’s if they just looked in the right place.

Deep in thought and preoccupied, Elizabeth rooted in her purse for her sunglasses but never found them. From nowhere someone bumped into her, knocking her purse to the ground and sending her back a few steps. She bent automatically to pick up her purse.

“I’ll get that for you, Ms. Boyer,” a cultured voice said.

“No. That’s fine. I can get it,” she said, shaking the water off her leather designer handbag. She didn’t bother to look up, but assumed it had been the voice of her careless sidewalk mate. As she stood, purse in hand, she realized he’d known her name and found her path still blocked. A man who was perhaps six inches taller than her own five feet seven inches stood staring at her with a look in his eyes that robbed her of her ability to move. Hate and malevolence radiated from him. And she was his target.

“What?” she found herself automatically asking the angry, blond Adonis blocking her path.

“I’m glad you asked. What I want from you is for you to tell me where you’ve hidden Melissa.”

Melissa? The only Melissa she knew was Melissa Hobart. Three months earlier, Elizabeth had been called to the ER by the hospital’s social worker to come pick up a domestic abuse victim and offer her shelter. Ugliness hid in all sorts of pretty packages in today’s world, Elizabeth thought, staring at Brian Hobart’s pretty face and remembering the bruised and broken young woman she’d picked up that day.

Melissa Hobart had a job and was nearly ready to move into her own apartment. Her divorce had been filed last week. She’d moved on. Apparently her abusive husband wasn’t ready to let go.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, sir,” Elizabeth lied. “Please step aside.”

“You know exactly what I’m talking about. You run the New Life Inn. That has to be where Melissa is. Look, I just need to talk to her. She won’t give me a chance to explain. I just want the chance to patch it up with her. Things are different now. I’m more in control of myself. Her leaving really woke me up.”

Brian Hobart smiled then, and Elizabeth understood how Melissa had talked herself into going back to him time and time again after his temper put her in the hospital. But he’d met his match. Elizabeth wasn’t fooled by the smile or the speech. She understood about men like Hobart. But she didn’t under
stand how he’d found out where his wife was. Everything about the New Life Inn women’s shelter was supposed to be confidential.

“I’m sorry. I can’t help you,” Elizabeth claimed. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, sir. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have business in the post office.”

Hobart stepped closer and grabbed Elizabeth’s wrist in a punishing grip. He did it so smoothly and quickly she doubted anyone realized she had no choice but to allow him to stand so close. And to Elizabeth’s mortification she let out a pained and fearfilled whimper. His grip tightened, and her gaze flew to his face.

“Quiet, Ms. Boyer. We wouldn’t want to attract a crowd, would we?” This time his smile reminded her of a snake ready to strike. “And, no. I will not excuse you,” he said, squeezing so hard Elizabeth thought her wrist would shatter if he tightened his grip anymore. “You tell me where Melissa is and you tell me now.”

She stared into his sneering face, her heart leaping into her throat. Repelled, she looked away, frantically hoping to see someone who realized this was not a friendly encounter.

A soothing hand settled gently on her shoulder from behind, and a strong male arm stretched forward and braced against Hobart’s chest. “That grip you have on Ms. Boyer’s wrist doesn’t look real comfortable. Suppose you let go and step back, fella.” Jack Alton’s suggestion sounded so wonderfully dan
gerous in his deep voice that Elizabeth’s heart leaped with gratitude.

“This is none of your business,” Brian Hobart snapped.

“You could take that view, I suppose, but since she’s a friend and it doesn’t look as if you are, then I’d say we have a difference of opinion. Now, one more time. Step back or I’ll put you in the dirt.”

Faced with someone his own size whom he couldn’t intimidate, Hobart let go and stepped back. He was a typical bully.

“Look, you’re a man,” he said, his voice a tad anxious. “You should understand how I feel. She’s hiding my wife, and I have a God-given right to talk to my own woman. They’re brainwashing her in that shelter. She even filed for divorce. She’d never do that without them influencing her.”

“Well, now. I don’t know if Ms. Boyer is hiding your wife from you or not. And I can’t know what’s in the young lady’s head since I don’t know her. But I will agree that I’m a man,” Jack said slowly, as if he were addressing a small child. “You, however, I’m not too sure about. Using force on a woman doesn’t make you a man. Just the opposite in my book. So I can’t really say I could put myself in your shoes. No wife of mine would ever need to hide from me in a shelter.” Jack took a step forward. “Now go climb into whatever car you arrived in and get! I’m about out of patience,
boy.
”

Brian Hobart walked backward a few steps as if making sure Jack stayed where he was then turned to
hurry to his car. He stopped next to his silver Lexus, apparently having found his bravery now that half a parking lot was between him and Jack. He glared at both of them.

“Where do you get off interfering with a marriage? I’ll find her and she’ll come home with me. You haven’t won.”

They watched in silence, Jack’s hand still on her shoulder, as Brian Hobart got in his car and wheeled out of the parking lot. Only then did Elizabeth feel the tingle of blood rushing into her fingers and the residual ache in her wrist from Hobart’s punishing grip. She cradled her hand and wrist, wincing at the pain. To her everlasting embarrassment, she started to shake, and her legs grew weak. She thought she might wind up a heap on the sidewalk, but Jack encircled her with his arms and braced both her elbows.

“That little café looks mighty inviting just about now. Suppose we wander on in there and get ourselves something to drink.”

“I—I have to go to the post office.”

Jackson glanced at the little clock tower at the edge of the lot. “I’d say you have another couple hours before it closes. Do you really have to go right now?”

Elizabeth shook her head, knowing as well as he did that she’d never be able to stand in line the way she felt at that moment. Besides, for some reason, probably because he’d come to her aid, his presence was comforting. She really didn’t want to be without that right now.

“Something cool to drink sounds perfect. I’m sorry
I’m in such a dither. That was such a shock. No one at the hospital is supposed to give out information about the shelter. If its location is compromised…”

Jack led her into the little café, then went to the counter and returned minutes later. She still hadn’t managed a clear, concise thought by the time he did. In his hands he had a plastic bag of ice and a towel he’d obviously asked for.

“This should minimize any bruising or swelling,” he said then he wrapped the ice in the towel and gently circled her wrist with it, tying the ends of the cloth in a knot. Then he was gone, only to return seconds later with two tall glasses. “Now suppose you tell me about this shelter,” he suggested as he sat across from her, putting iced tea in front of each of them. His smile brightened his already bluer than blue eyes.

Elizabeth pushed the thought of his eyes out of her head and forced herself to answer his question. “Maggie O’Neill, the housekeeper my parents had since before I can remember, broke her hip a couple of years ago. While she was in the hospital, she had a roommate. Donna looked as though she had been in a severe car accident. Maggie managed to get her talking a little but it was as if Donna tried to make herself invisible.

“I felt so sorry for her. No one ever came to see her but her husband and he was…intimidating, I guess would describe him best. Donna reverted to being a silent shadow when he was there. He even made Maggie nervous, and she has the heart of a Valkyrie.
Then one day I heard the nurses talking about Donna’s injuries. Apparently this wasn’t the first time she’d been in the hospital. And each time it had been her husband who’d put her there. She refused to press charges. I asked them why someone didn’t help her. They said they had tried to talk her out of going home with him each time but she had nowhere to go.

“Her situation haunted me. I wanted to help her so I went to the room and tried to reach her. I thought I had. We were going to talk more the next day about her coming to stay with me until she was ready to go out on her own.

“I didn’t understand many of the things I do now about Donna’s situation. An hour with Maggie and me telling her she didn’t deserve such treatment and that she could make it on her own just couldn’t compete with her husband.”

“How so?” Jack asked, looking interested and concerned. It surprised her, but she realized it shouldn’t after the way he’d spoken to Brian Hobart. So she went on having a conversation with him she’d never had with anyone else.

“Men like him are very subtle at first,” she told him. “They start by undermining the woman’s confidence in herself and her ability to make it in life without him. Next they separate their partner from any support structure outside of them. That’s why no one came to see Donna. She no longer had friends or family to turn to. She had only him.”

“What a shame.”

Elizabeth nodded, remembering Donna as if she’d
seen her yesterday. “Very much a shame because by the time the physical abuse begins the mental abuse has prepared the victim to accept the treatment as justified. Even if they don’t accept it, they have no one they feel comfortable turning to. The reason these men give for their actions is usually that the violence is the woman’s fault. They aren’t good enough housekeepers, mothers—lovers. There’s always something that makes her deserve his wrath. By that time, these women are so isolated that even if they want to leave they don’t see how they can.”

“Did she—”

Hurting all over again, Elizabeth shook her head and fiddled with the knot Jack had so carefully made in the towel around her wrist. “She left the hospital with him that day. Two days later she was in the ER, but this time he’d gone too far. She died of internal injuries. If there’s a God, Donna’s husband will never get out of prison.”

“Oh, there is, and when the State of Pennsylvania gets done with him, God will be waiting to take over.”

Liking Jack’s take on the situation, she nodded and went on with her story. “I decided I was going to use my connections and my finance degree to help women who feel helpless take charge again and build better lives for themselves. You can’t imagine how awful it is to have someone overpower you and take away your choices,” she said, needing someone to understand why she cared about women like Donna and Melissa. She couldn’t single-handedly prevent the
kind of life-stealing event that had happened to her behind the high school but she could give these women back their lives.

“I take it you succeeded,” Jack said, approval in his expression.

Elizabeth nodded. “I raised the money to buy a big old home on one of the most rural roads around here and to fund the kinds of programs women like Melissa need to break free and take control of their lives.”

“What is your connection now? Why did Hobart sound so sure that you knew where his wife is?”

“I’ve kept a low profile about it but I stayed on as the administrator. Meg talked me into it and I’m so grateful she did. It’s very rewarding seeing these women become whole, learn real life skills and stand on their own two feet again. They’re different people when they leave than they are when they arrive. Because I’m the administrator, I’m also the contact person the hospital social workers call when they need to place a woman in my facility. I took Melissa Hobart from the hospital to the New Life Inn myself.”

“New Life Inn. I like that,” Jack said, but then he frowned. “Someone must have seen you pick her up and told Hobart.”

“I don’t see how. I have a routine for pickups. I wait in the hospital’s employee lot. It’s walled in on all sides, and we do it in the middle of the night when there isn’t a shift change. It was nearly two in the morning and no one was around.”

A thought occurred to her, and Elizabeth started to
stand but quickly gave up. Her legs were still unsteady.

“Whoa. I don’t think you have your sea legs yet. What’s wrong?” he asked, a look of concern settling on his handsome features.

“It doesn’t matter how he got the information, I have to warn Melissa Hobart.”

“Don’t you have a cell phone?”

“I left it in my car.”

Jack pulled his phone off his belt and handed it to her. She made the call and was relieved that Melissa remained not only steadfast and determined to stay free of her husband, but was angry rather than afraid. Her commute to her job in Center City, Philadelphia, was long, but since her new apartment was just outside the city, it soon wouldn’t be. Melissa told Elizabeth she had decided to move in immediately and not wait to buy the rest of her furniture. She had a bed and, to her, camping out in an empty apartment was better than crossing paths with Brian Hobart.