Annie pushed her bedroom door shut and leaned back against it. She’d done it, she thought as her eyes slid closed and her shoulders slumped. She had survived the day. She had buried her husband. She had made it through the hours of friends and acquaintances, sad smiles, deviled eggs, ham sandwiches, and gallons of coffee. She had put her son to bed. Her son, who had turned into a hostile stranger every time Harper got near.
And she had looked into a pair of hard gray eyes that used to be soft. She had faced Harper. She had even managed to show him to Mike’s room across the hall with her composure more or less intact.
Now that she was alone in her room, the nerves and adrenaline that had kept her upright throughout the day deserted her. No one was watching. No one would see that her control was gone. No one would know if her hands trembled. She could, for just a few minutes, let go.
As her knees buckled, she slid down the door until she met the floor.
He came. Harper came.
Shame and guilt hit her. She had no right to think of him. No right. She’d thrown it away years ago. Ten long years. It was Mike she should be thinking of. Her husband. Her dead husband. Yet it was Harper’s face that swam behind her closed eyes. Lean and hard and good-looking with that square jaw, those sharp cheekbones, and lips shaped like…sin.
The thought startled her. When was the last time she’d even noticed a man’s lips?
With a harsh, silent laugh she pushed herself to her feet and began undressing. Harper’s lips were the least of her worries. She was glad he had come, ashamed that she hadn’t called him herself. But what was she to do now? What was she supposed to say to him? How was she supposed to act? He’d been cool and distant with her the two times they spoke during the long afternoon. Did he still hate her so very much?
“Of course he does,” she whispered. “Why wouldn’t he?”
But then, maybe he didn’t hate her. Maybe he didn’t care enough anymore for even that.
But he would. He would hate her. Soon.
Harper stood in the bedroom for a long moment, staring at the door across the hall, the door where Annie had gone. Around him the old house creaked and groaned as it settled for the night. The central heating kicked on and warm air rushed in through the vent over his head. He reached out and softly closed the door.
Mike’s room. That’s what she’d called it. Not their room, or Mike’s old room, or the extra room, or the guest room, but Mike’s room. She’d even offered him Mike’s clothes to wear, telling him to help himself as she pointed to the closet and dresser in this, Mike’s room.
“Thanks, but I’ve got extra clothes,” he’d told her.
She had swallowed and looked away. “Oh. Well…good night, then.” And she had scooted across the hall and into her room like a con breaking jail.
Now, with Annie behind her closed door, Harper behind his, he turned to look around. The dresser and chest of drawers and closet were filled with men’s clothes. Mike’s clothes. There was nothing of Annie’s anywhere in the room. It even smelled like a man’s room.
If he needed more proof to make himself believe what he’d just learned, a pair of men’s slippers poked out from underneath the bed. Mike had always hated getting his feet cold. He’d always kept his house shoes tucked under the bed so he could slip into them in the mornings.
Shock held Harper still for another long moment as he repeated the new knowledge to himself: Mike and Annie had separate bedrooms.
Separate bedrooms.
For how long?
He shook his head. It wasn’t his business. He didn’t give a damn. Yet it disturbed him in ways he didn’t understand.
Through all these years, whenever he had let himself think about Mike and Annie, he’d pictured them happily married, Mike probably gloating now and then over stealing Harp’s girl. Annie laughing about how she’d fooled Harper into thinking she really loved him.
Separate bedrooms, a bruise on her cheek, fingerprints on her throat, and a ferocious, hostile, nine-year-old bodyguard told an entirely different story.
What the hell had gone on in this house?
Mike’s room. This had always been Mike’s room, although it had been redecorated for an adult since Harper had left home. His dad’s room now belonged to young Jason.
A warm, prickly feeling teased the back of his neck as he realized where Annie slept. His old room. Right where he’d always wanted her.
He shook his head again. That kind of thinking was crazy. He didn’t want Annie anymore. Hadn’t in years. Wouldn’t have her if she begged him, not after what she’d done. He didn’t care where she slept.
Hell, the room across the hall wasn’t his anymore. He’d caught a glimpse of it before she’d closed the door. There were no astronaut or rock band posters on the walls, no University of Oklahoma pennants. The walls were plain, unadorned white. His old mismatched furniture had been replaced by a gleaming oak bedroom suite. Instead of a twin bed, there was now a queen. There were no dirty socks piled on her new powder-blue carpet. He didn’t have a room in this house any longer.
She expected him to sleep in Mike’s room, wear Mike’s clothes. No way in hell. With a snarled oath he swung open the door and headed down the dark stairs.
The living room held too many reminders of the afternoon, the funeral. He went to the den instead, feeling his way in the dark. His fingers brushed the door frame and felt a nick in the wood. Suddenly he stopped and touched the spot again.
Memories swamped him. The laughter of two young boys echoed through his mind. Then arguing, then tears. He’d been nine and Mike seven. They’d been teasing each other about something—who could swim the fastest. Teasing had turned to shoving, and Mike had tripped him. Harper had hit his mouth against the door frame and lost a tooth. Right there. Right on the spot he was now touching. He remembered as if it were yesterday. He’d hollered like a calf stuck in the mud, and he and Mike had both gotten their butts dusted for roughhousing indoors.
No fighting indoors had been one of Mom’s rules. Just because she’d died in a car wreck out on the highway three years earlier didn’t mean Dad would stop enforcing her rules. For him it had been a way to keep her memory alive, to make sure the boys didn’t forget her. But for boys that young, forgetting was inevitable. So were occasional lapses in manners, as that day had proven.
The memory tugged at him, poignant, funny, sad. Two brothers, close, but not close enough. Never quite in sync with each other. Never wanting the same things out of life, never holding the same ideals.
Harper let the memories fade and switched on the lamp beside the door. The room was comfortable, homey-feeling. Much more so than his sterile apartment in Oklahoma City. A grouping of photographs on the table next to the sofa drew him.
His throat tightened as he picked up the shot of his father waving his Crow Creek Feed and Seed ball cap from atop the old John Deere. Ten years, and Harper still missed him. After a long, aching moment he set the picture back down and glanced at the next one.
His fist tightened. Mike and Annie, his arm around her, her arms holding a new baby. Dammit!
Harper turned away sharply, feeling his gut clench. Fury, old and long-buried, rose up to choke him. She should have been his wife. Jason should have been his son.
Shocked by his own thoughts, Harper threw himself down on the sofa. It must be all the reminders—the house, Annie, the photograph of his dad. He would have sworn he’d gotten over Annie years ago.
In the morning he would talk to her, find out about her bruises. Then he would leave.
Hell, maybe he would forget the questions. None of it was his business. Maybe he’d just go home.
If he had any sense at all, he wouldn’t wait for morning, he’d get the hell out right now.
Apparently he had no sense, for he shifted to find a more comfortable spot on the old couch and settled in. Not quite long enough to accommodate all six feet of him, the couch was covered in nubby wears-like-iron nylon from the sixties. The half-inch cording that trimmed the edges of each of the three cushions dug painfully into his back. He felt like he was sleeping on a bed of rebar. It had been every bit as uncomfortable years ago when he’d finally gotten Annie on it for a little heavy necking that night they’d beaten his dad home from the ball game…
Damn. That was one particular memory he didn’t want to relive. What the hell were they doing with the same damn couch after all these years?
The living room with its gruesome reminders of condolences and funerals was looking better by the minute.
Lying awake in her upstairs bedroom trying to decide exactly what words to use when she spoke with Harper in the morning, Annie heard him leave Mike’s room and go downstairs. Was he hungry, or just restless?
She waited a long time, throat dry, heart pounding from just knowing he was in the house, thinking that for the first time in ten years, she might be able to—to what? Set things straight? Tell the truth? Ask his forgiveness?
With a groan Annie rolled over, bunched her pillow up beneath her head, and tucked another one between her knees to keep her back from aching. Did she really think that a few words were going to erase what she’d done? Things could never be set right. Not now. Not after all these years. Not after what she’d done. Yet she knew she had to try. She had to do something. He was here now. This was her only chance.
When she didn’t hear him come back upstairs, she worked up her courage and crawled out of bed. If he was awake and felt like talking…
As quietly as possible—she was finding step by step that she didn’t have as much courage as she’d thought—she crept down the stairs. There was a light on in the den, but the room was empty. She found him stretched out on the living room sofa, asleep. His breathing and the faint ticking of the mantel clock were the only sounds in the house until a moment later when the refrigerator cycled on in the kitchen.
The utility light on the pole outside at the corner of the yard cast his face in a pale glow.
He looked older. Harder. Leaner. The angles and planes of his face, the breadth of his shoulders…He looked implacable. Unyielding. He looked…alone. And cold, she thought with a sudden shiver. And not just from the chill in the room.
She wondered if he still worked under cover. Then she thought to wonder, Is he married? That he might be, that he probably was, made her ache deep inside.
She had no right to ache, to secretly wish— No right.
Did he have children? He should have children.
Annie swallowed a wad of tears and turned away. If she stood there much longer he might wake, and she suddenly realized she wasn’t ready to talk to him yet. She took a quilt from the hall closet and covered him, then crept back up the stairs. Sometime around dawn she finally managed to fall asleep.
Sunlight on his face woke Harper the next morning. He was immediately aware of three things: he had a crick in his neck; somewhere near, there was hot coffee; and staring at him from less than three feet away was a pair of startled eyes the exact same shade of gray as his own.
His eyes, only younger, more innocent. Mike’s nose. Dad’s jaw. Annie’s mouth.
Something deep inside Harper’s chest tightened painfully. The four of them, Dad, Mike, Annie, himself, stamped plainly on the face of an entirely new person. The hot acid of jealousy shocked him, as it had last night when he’d looked at the picture of Mike and Annie holding their newborn son.
The young gray eyes narrowed with suspicion. “So how come you slept on the couch?”
Harper stilled. There was something behind the question that he didn’t understand. Harper chose his words carefully, making certain they were the truth. “I didn’t feel right taking your dad’s bed.”
The boy watched him closely, warily, for a moment. He clutched his jean-clad knees tightly. His lip wore a slight sneer. “How come you never came to see us before?”
“Jason,” Annie said with dismay and disapproval from the doorway. “I told you not to wake him.”
“He didn’t wake me.” Harper reached to throw off the quilt, only just then realizing it was there. Annie must have covered him. She must have watched him as he’d slept, stood over him, been right next to him. How could he not have known she’d been there?
He eyed her, wondering. Had she been unable to sleep, and come downstairs in the middle of the night only to find an intruder on her sofa? Or had she found him when she’d risen this morning? No, he felt too warm for that. He’d had the quilt for a long time.
She’d just buried her husband. It figured she might have a little trouble sleeping at night. What he wanted to know was why she had so much trouble meeting his gaze now. Whatever had once been between them was old news. Over with. Dead. Gone. Kaput. She hadn’t had any trouble looking him in the eye that day ten years ago. Why couldn’t she do it now?
She was pale, her hair limp, the bruise on her cheek a vivid, ugly reminder that he had other questions, more important questions.
“Breakfast is ready,” she said to the door frame as she turned away.
Breakfast was strained and quiet. Annie hadn’t expected it to be otherwise. Harper was polite, Jason bristling with an anger she didn’t understand, and she felt like a good scream might help release the tension inside her. Harper’s presence after all this time was unnerving. But she wouldn’t scream. Annie Samuels Montgomery was known for her calm, her control.
What a laugh, she thought as Jason bolted down the last of his food and asked to be excused. Reluctantly, she gave permission. She wasn’t ready to be alone with Harper. Ready or not, though, here it came. And it was past time, she knew. Ten years past time.
“What happened to your face, Annie?” Harper’s voice was quiet in the stillness of the kitchen.
It got older, she thought with a touch of hysteria. But that, she knew, was not what he was asking. She met his deliberate stare and resisted the urge to cover her cheek. “Just an accident.”
One thick eyebrow, several shades darker than his sandy hair, arched upward. “A lot of accidents going on around here lately. Mike, you. How about the fingerprints around your neck? Did you get those by accident too?”
This time her hand came up involuntarily to tug at the neck of her sweater. Her hand shook. Control, Annie. Maintain control. “Yes. An accident.”
“You expect me to believe that?” he shot back.
“No.” She swallowed hard and pushed away from the table. She rose and started stacking plates. “Given our past, I don’t really expect you to believe anything I say.”
She could tell her words stunned him. He hadn’t expected her to bring up their past. But she had to. Somehow she had to find a way to talk about it, to explain.
Harper apparently had other ideas. “Old history. Are your finances okay?”
Halfway to the sink with a load of dirty dishes, she paused. Tension tightened her shoulders. “What do you mean?” He couldn’t know about Mike’s bragging, could he?
“I mean, if you and Mike had a joint bank account, it’s probably frozen because of his death. If you had uninsured debts, you’re going to have creditors hounding you. What about life insurance? Have you located the policy and called the company?”
“Oh.” Bewildered once again by all the technicalities of death, she set the plates in the sink. “Thanks for reminding me. I’ll check first thing Monday.”
Harper stood and brought his plate to the sink. Over the lingering aromas of coffee and bacon, he scented the hint of talcum powder. Baby powder, he suddenly remembered. She’d always liked the way it smelled, the way it felt so silky on her skin. So had he.
He didn’t want to remember things like that. “If you want me to, I’ll look through Mike’s papers for you now.”
“I can’t ask you to do that.” She moved away from him, almost skittered away, as though uncomfortable with his nearness.
He knew just how she felt. He shouldn’t even be here, he thought. He should be up in the city, working. “You didn’t ask. I offered. Just show me where to look. Unless you’d rather I butt out.”
Annie’s heart shook. “No,” she said quickly. What if he decided to leave? She couldn’t let him leave, not until she’d set things straight. Or as straight as they could be after all this time.
Guilt and fear rolled over in her stomach. “No. I appreciate the offer.”
She had to keep him there, at least for a little while, until she worked up her nerve. “All the papers are in the desk in the den. I’ll show you.”
She led him to the den, to the desk in the corner. “He keeps—kept all our papers in the bottom drawer.”
When Harper leaned down to pull open the drawer, she moved closer and pointed. “There’s the insurance file, papers on the farm, the cars…”
Harper stepped back. That damn baby powder was after him again. Heat and memories surged in his blood, shocking him with their intensity. This wasn’t going to work. Whatever questions he’d had about her bruises, they couldn’t matter now. Mike was dead. And Harper was suddenly feeling inappropriately, acutely, unwillingly alive. He had to get the hell away from her.
“Look,” he said, his voice harsh. “I have to get back to the city. Why don’t I take these home with me and go through them there? I’ll let you know in a day or so what I find.”
Relief. That was the first emotion that washed through Annie. Guilt came second. Guilt for feeling relieved that he was leaving. If he took the papers he would have to come back. Maybe by then she would know what to say to him. She really should talk to him now, while Jason was upstairs. She shouldn’t let Harper leave without telling him the truth of what had happened ten years ago.
She kept telling herself that the whole time she watched him barrel down the driveway as if the devil himself were chasing him.