Jake tapped his fork on the table. “No.”
“Pardon me?” Tara responded.
“You aren’t going to be alone with him. Not in your house, not in a car, not on the damn moon. Nowhere.”
This was going to be more difficult that she’d thought. “Jake, it’s none of your business. You don’t have anything to say about it.”
“Really?” Jake stood up, sending his chair skidding back. It hit the wall with a crack. He braced his arms on the table and towered over her. “I think you’re wrong, Tara.”
He looked like he wanted to wring her neck with his bare hands. His face was red and his breathing ragged. He reminded her of, oh, God, of Michael. For the first time, Tara felt afraid of Jake.
She stood up and backed away from him, stopping when her back hit the wall. There was eight feet between them. Could she make it to the door this time? Or would he rip her apart? “Get out of here,” she said. “Get out of here and don’t ever come near me again.”
“Tara?” he growled. “You’re acting weird.”
Michael always made it seem like it was her fault, too. Frantic, Tara glanced around the room, searching for a weapon. She edged toward the steak knife on the table, keeping her back to the wall, her eyes on him.
Jake lunged toward her.
Tara screamed and scrambled for the knife. Jake caught her wrist. She kicked and scratched with her free hand. He pulled her in tight and wrapped his broad arms around her, trapping her against his big body.
It was just like before. He was bigger, stronger. She would die this time. “You bastard,” she cried.
He tightened his grip. She couldn’t breathe. “What?” he asked, his voice raspy in her ear. “What did you just say?”
“I’m sorry,” she sobbed. “I didn’t mean to make you angry. Don’t hurt me.”
He released her and stepped back, both hands in the air. “What the hell is going on here?”
Tara couldn’t stop the tears. Fourteen months of pretending that she wasn’t scared anymore, fourteen months of thinking that she’d left it all behind, fourteen months of lying to herself.
Oh, God.
Her stomach hurt, her chest ached, and she couldn’t get enough air. She gulped for breath, trying to hang on.
“Goddamn it, Tara. You’re scaring me.”
The room started to go gray. She swayed.
Jake grabbed her, not as tight as before, leaving her arms free. “Tara,” he said. “Calm down. You’re hyperventilating. Breathe in through your nose. Out your mouth. Come on, honey. To the count of three. Breathe in, two, three. Then out, two, three. You can do this.”
She focused on his voice. When her body stopped shaking, he tilted her chin up with one finger. “Better?”
She nodded.
“Here’s what we’re going to do.” He spoke to her like she was a small child. “We’re going to walk over to that couch and we’re going to have a seat. Can you do that?”
She nodded. Once he got her seated, he took the chair opposite of her. She concentrated on breathing. In. Out. In, two, three. Out, two, three.
“I don’t want to upset you but I need you to tell me what happened here,” he said. “I just aged about five years.”
“Someone is trying to kill me. Just me. It has nothing to do with you. You’re not part of this.”
“What?” he barked. He held up his hand. “Sorry. What?” he asked, his voice deliberately softer.
“Michael. Michael Masterly is trying to kill me. Again.”
Jake looked around the house as if he expected someone to jump from the shadows. “Who is Michael Masterly?”
“He was my fiancé.”
“Oh.” Jake swallowed, his throat visibly working. “I thought you’d said that you’d never even been close.”
“I lied,” she said. He had to know it all.
“What happened?”
“Fourteen months ago he tried to kill me. It started before that, though.”
“What started?”
“We got engaged in August and planned to be married in the spring. In September, I was working for the
Washington Post
as a reporter, covering the candidates for the November election. A fundraiser ran long one night and when I got home late, Michael jumped to the conclusion that I was late because I’d been with another man. He…he beat me up. He hurt me pretty bad. I had a cracked rib, a black eye, loose teeth, lots of other bruises.”
Tara heard Jake’s soft oath but she didn’t look up. There was more. It was easier to keep going. “I should have left him. But I didn’t. I really believed that he loved me, and he’d never done anything like that before. He begged for my forgiveness and I gave it to him. Everything was fine until a month before the wedding. My friends threw a shower for me. They hired a stripper.”
She looked up at Jake and he gave her a small smile. “I know it was stupid,” she continued, “but they did it to be funny and he was actually a nice guy. He didn’t strip all the way but he got pretty close. Anyway, at one point in the evening, he kissed me. Just an insignificant little kiss. My friend had her camera there and she snapped a picture of it. A week or so later, she sent a copy to me through the mail. She figured I’d get a laugh out of it.” Tara stopped, staring at her hands, not sure if she could go on.
“What happened?”
“Michael opened the mail and saw the picture. I got home that night, and practically before I got my coat off, he was tearing into me.” She hesitated, then pulled up the sleeve of her T-shirt. “He…he did this.”
She heard Jake suck in a breath. He was staring at her arm. His face had lost its color.
“What happened?” he asked. His voice was hushed, like he was afraid to talk too loudly.
“He broke it in three places. I think when he saw the bone sticking out of my arm he came to his senses and stopped. He took me to the hospital and I had surgery.”
She waited for him to take a step back, to turn away in disgust. But he didn’t. He reached out, cupped her elbow with one hand and used the index finger on his other hand to trace the
X
that marred her. Up and down. Back and forth.
It was the first time anyone had ever touched her arm. She wanted to pull away, to hide. She couldn’t. He held her arm gently, yet firmly.
Oh, God,
she thought. She’d missed being touched. She could feel the rough tips of his fingers slide across the still-tender skin. A gentle caress. She’d almost managed to relax when he bent his head and kissed her arm.
The heat streaked up past her shoulder, arced across her collarbone and settled like a ball of fire in her chest.
“Oh, Jake,” she cried. “Don’t. It’s horrible.”
He lifted his head and shook it. Then he bent forward again and his warm lips kissed her arm again.
Her head felt light and it didn’t seem connected to her neck. She might have swayed because he stopped, stood up and pulled her securely into his body.
Bone against bone. Curve against curve.
Need against need.
“Tara, we’re all scarred,” he whispered into her ear. “With some of us, the scars are visible. Others hide them better. It doesn’t matter. It’s who we are, what we are.”
She closed her eyes and rested her chin on his shoulder. “It doesn’t make you sick?”
“Of course not.”
He was rubbing her back and it made it hard to think, let alone talk, but she couldn’t hold it back a minute longer. “I had pretty arms,” she said. “I know that’s vain and conceited and you probably think I’m awful. That I should be happy it wasn’t worse or that I didn’t lose my strength or the use of my hand.”
“You still have pretty arms,” he said. He placed both his hands on her shoulders and inch by inch, slid them slowly down the length of her arms. “Firm muscle. Soft skin. Feminine. Gorgeous. Just perfect.”
She started to cry.
He pulled her even tighter against him and wrapped his strong arms around her. He rocked her back and forth. “I’m so sorry you were hurt,” he crooned, patting her hair. “I’m so sorry.”
She kept her face buried in his shirt until the tears subsided. He held her a minute more before pulling back, just far enough that he could put a finger under her chin and tilt her face up. He brushed the tears off her cheeks. “You have a beautiful face, too,” he said, his tone very serious.
“Freckles aren’t so beautiful,” she said, embarrassed to be inspected so closely. She must look a sight. Her nose was probably bright pink.
“Yours are.” He bent forward and kissed the bridge of her nose. Then he studied her cheek. “You’ve got a couple freckles here, too.”
How nice of him to notice.
He kissed them, his lips just brushing against her skin.
His lips were warm and soft and delightful.
“You’ve got a tiny one right there, in the corner of your mouth.”
“I do?”
He licked the spot with the tip of his tongue.
Oh, my
. She gripped his arms.
He took his hands and gently cupped her face. And when he pulled her forward, and her lips met his, everything seemed just right. It was a kiss of young lovers. Tentative. Gentle. Sweet.
He paused, resting his forehead against hers. Then he shifted and she could see his eyes, see his pain. “You…you really thought I would hurt you? Like he did?” he asked.
She heard the despair in his voice and knew that she’d made a terrible mistake.
“I’m sorry. I got scared.”
He shook his head, like he couldn’t believe it. “I would never harm you,” he said, his voice low. “I would die myself before I let someone else harm you.”
Oh, no. She couldn’t breathe again.
In, two, three. Out, two, three.
She would not, would absolutely not, pass out on him.
“Jake, I—”
“What happened to him? To Masterly?”
Tara could feel him channeling his hurt to anger. “Nothing. I refused to give the hospital any details. They called the police and I wouldn’t talk to them, either. They knew what had happened. I could see it in their eyes. But when I wouldn’t tell them, they couldn’t do anything.”
“Why?” he asked. “Why wouldn’t you let them help you?”
“I was a reporter, trained to observe. How was I going to admit that the man I planned to marry in three weeks was a maniac?” Tara pulled away and began to walk in circles around the room. “But I would have done that,” she continued, turning to look at Jake, “I would have taken the chance. But he told me that he’d kill me if I told anyone. I believed him. I’d seen the rage in him. I knew that I’d been lucky to get away with multiple compound fractures and assorted bruises.”
“Damn him.”
Tara gave him a small smile. “I knew that Michael would be arrested, maybe even convicted. Then the family money would have bought him probation, not jail time. You and I both know that Michael could have gotten to me if he wanted to.”
“So what did you do?”
“After I got out of the hospital, I went to a friend’s house, someone whom Michael didn’t know. The only people who knew the address were the police. But somehow Michael got the address and came to see me. I’m sure he bought someone off. He begged me to come home, made me all kinds of promises. I realized then that he was never going to leave me alone.”
She stood in the kitchen and ran her hand along the side of the refrigerator door. After a long pause, she made eye contact again. “That’s when I started planning. I was hurt, in no shape to travel. I told him that I wanted to stay with my friend for a few weeks but then I’d come back. Every night he called me. Every night I had to keep telling him the same lies, had to keep telling him that I loved him, that I forgave him.”
“He believed you?”
“I think so. Probably because he couldn’t imagine that I could live without him. Once I got the clearance from my physician that I was okay to travel, I ran. I had inherited a little money from my parents and my friend who worked in the human resources office at the paper helped me get my hands on my 401(k) money. In the middle of the night, I left town. I’ve never been back.”
“But what about your family? What did you tell them?”
“My parents are both dead. I didn’t lie to you about that. They were killed in a car accident just months before I met Michael. I was an only child.”
“And you came to Wyattville?”
“Yes. I paid cash for the restaurant and I bought it under a…borrowed name.”
“Borrowed?”
“Tara Thompson is a real person. She’s about my age and she lives in a home for the mentally impaired. She doesn’t talk or hear. I was doing a story about her, and others like her, when I decided to disappear. I had all her information, even her Social Security number.”
“What’s your real name?” he asked.
“It’s…” She hesitated.
“Tara,” Jake spoke softly, his mouth a grim line. “I promise you that I’ve never met Michael Masterly. But if I ever do, I’ll rip his arm off. Then, who knows?”
Tara gasped. “I don’t need—”
“What’s your real name?”
“Joanna Travis.”
“Joanna Travis.” He repeated the name, then a rather pithy oath.
“You don’t like it?” she asked.
“No.” He waved away her question. “I have something I need to tell you.”
“Go ahead. How bad can it be?”
“I don’t know how bad it is. The day you were sick and I opened the restaurant with Janet, I answered a phone call. A man asked to speak to Joanna Travis. I told him he had the wrong number. He apologized and hung up. I didn’t think anything more about it.”
“It’s him,” Tara said. “Oh, God. When I saw the engagement picture, I thought it might be over.”
“Engagement picture? What are you talking about?”
“Michael got engaged about three months ago. To a woman that I’d met just once or twice when Michael and I were dating. I thought it was possible that he’d moved on. But then, just recently, I’d found out the engagement was cancelled.”
“How did you find that out?”
“Every couple of weeks, I go to Minneapolis. I can get internet access there. I can catch up on what my friends are writing for the paper and I can keep tabs on Michael. He makes the society news.”
“The library?” Jake smacked himself on the head with the palm of his hand. “You go to the library to use the internet?”
“Yes.” She looked confused. “There are all kinds of ways that people can track computer activity. I didn’t want there to be any possible way that inquiries about Michael could be traced back to Wyattville.”