Authors: Carla Cassidy
W
asn’t this the way it always was? Mariah thought with a touch of irritation. While her light had been on and she’d been trying to read, she’d grown so sleepy the words had blurred together and her eyelids had been too heavy to keep open. The minute she put the book down and turned off her lamp, her sleepiness disappeared.
She lay on her back in the darkness, her mind tumbling thoughts around and around. Janice’s unexpected arrival had been a pleasant surprise and Mariah looked forward to showing her around the town where Mariah had been raised.
And then there was Jack. She felt like a teenager experiencing her first bloom of love and sexual awakening. He might have had a crush on her in high school, but she was developing a crush on him now. She smiled at the thought.
The smile fell and she froze as she thought she heard a noise from downstairs. She remained perfectly still as she listened.
Nothing.
Nothing except an overactive imagination and her
racing heartbeat, she thought. Her heartbeat slowed and she yawned. Then she heard it. The distinctive creak of the stair rung. She sat up as her heart stopped.
The fourth stair.
Somebody had just stepped on the fourth stair rung. Somebody was inside the house! Terror kept her frozen. She bit the inside of her mouth to keep from screaming, not wanting whoever it was to know she’d heard.
The tangy taste of blood filled her mouth as a second creak sounded. The fifth stair. There was a total of fourteen stairs leading from the downstairs to the upstairs hallway. And somebody was on the fifth stair, somebody who didn’t belong.
Somebody creeping up the stairs in the darkness of night.
The inertia that had gripped her broke as pungent terror seized her. It was
him
. She knew it was
him
. He’d come back for her. Once hadn’t been enough.
Oh God. Oh God.
He’d be in the room within a matter of seconds. She wouldn’t survive it again. She couldn’t survive
him
again. Without thought, acting only on instinct, on habits honed long ago, she rolled silently from the bed and crept on her hands and knees to the closet.
Help me, she screamed inside her head. Somebody please help me. She opened the closet door and got inside, pulling the door closed behind her.
Scrambling to hide behind the hanging clothes, in the darkest recess of the enclosure she curled into a fetal ball, her heart pounding so loudly she could hear nothing else.
Confusion muddied her thoughts, confusion bred
of terror. She was ten years old again and waiting for her father to find her, to punish her. She squeezed her eyes tightly closed. If you can’t see the boogeyman, then he can’t see you.
She was seventeen and on the ground beneath the trees, a bag over her head as she was brutalized. And now he was looking for her again. Not her father, but her rapist.
Holding her breath, she listened and waited for the closet door to be ripped open and his strong arms to yank her out of her hiding place. Seconds felt like an eternity as she waited for evil to find her for the second time in her life.
From outside she heard the sound of car doors, then the front door of the house open. “Mom!” Kelsey’s voice rang out. “The movie sucked, so we left early.”
Any fear Mariah might have felt for herself was superseded by her fear for her daughter. “Kelsey!” she screamed as she burst out of the closet. “Get out of the house.”
She expected to encounter somebody in her bedroom, a person on the stairs as she stumbled down to where Janice and Kelsey stood at the front door, shock on their features.
“Somebody was here,” she exclaimed with a half sob. “I heard them on the stairs. We have to get out. He could still be inside, hiding. We have to call Clay.”
She grabbed them both by their arms and pulled them out to the front porch, the terror still clawing up her throat, burning in her stomach.
Janice pulled a small revolver from her purse. “No need to bother the sheriff. I’ll check it out.”
Before Mariah could protest, Janice disappeared back into the house. Working with troubled teens in some of the more dangerous areas of Chicago, Janice not only carried a gun on a regular basis but also knew how to use it.
Mariah shot glances around the area as she pulled Kelsey closer to her side. Was the person still in the house? Or had he left when he heard the car approach and realized Kelsey and Janice were home?
The darkness around the house was lit up as Janice turned on light after light inside and with each new glow of illumination some of Mariah’s fear ebbed.
Kelsey remained quiet by Mariah’s side, her gaze intent on the front door as if willing Janice back in the doorway safe and sound.
Finally Janice returned to the porch. “If somebody was in here, they aren’t here now. I checked every room, every closet or cabinet big enough to hide somebody.” She looked at Mariah with a hint of worry. “Why don’t we all go back inside?”
Kelsey immediately ran upstairs to check on Tiny, who had been shut up in her bedroom, and Mariah and Janice sat at the kitchen table. Kelsey came back into the kitchen and announced that Tiny was fine.
They didn’t speak about what had just happened until Kelsey went to bed and Mariah and Janice were once again alone at the kitchen table.
“The front door was locked when we got home,” Janice said. “And when I checked out the house, the back door was locked as well. I can’t imagine how anyone might have gotten inside.” A worried frown tugged Janice’s eyebrows together as she gazed at Mariah.
“I swear I heard somebody coming up the stairs.
The fourth and fifth step creak and that’s what I heard.” Mariah leaned back in the chair and wrapped her arms around herself, an icy chill deep inside her as she thought of those two ominous creaks. “I know I heard it. I know it,” she said forcefully.
Janice continued to hold her gaze. “Is it possible you fell asleep and the noise you thought you heard was part of a dream?”
Mariah rubbed a hand across her forehead, where a fierce headache had blossomed. “I wasn’t asleep. I hadn’t fallen asleep yet.” She frowned. “At least I didn’t think I was asleep.” God, was she losing her mind? Had coming back here created more internal stress than she’d realized?
She dropped her hand from her head and stared down at the table. “I thought it was him,” she confessed.
“Him?”
She looked at her friend. “You know, him.”
Janice’s features all fell in dismay. “Oh, honey, why would you think such a thing? It’s been so many years, you don’t even know if he’s around this area. You don’t even know if he’s alive.”
“I know, I know. Rationally I understand all that.” Mariah broke off and sighed in frustration. How could she explain to Janice the feelings of dread that overtook her, the feeling that her attacker wasn’t dead or gone, but rather far too close? How could she make Janice understand the crazy feeling Mariah had that it wasn’t done, that it would never be finished?
“When I heard those footsteps, all I could think about was to hide. I got into my closet and for a moment I got confused—I thought it was my father
coming upstairs to beat me. Then I was certain it was my attacker returning.”
Mariah’s stomach was nothing but an icy center and she wondered if she’d ever be warm again, ever feel sane again.
“Look, maybe the best thing for you to do is to get out of here. You’ve made some nice progress on the house, but leave it for the new owners to complete. Put the For Sale sign in the yard, pack your bags and go home.”
Mariah knew it was good advice, but her heart rebelled at the idea. “I don’t want to do that. I need to see this through.” Once again she raised a hand to her throbbing forehead. “I know it doesn’t make any sense, but I need to see this place turned into something beautiful. I need to erase all the ugliness that’s still in my head. I know it sounds stupid, but I know it’s what I need to do.”
Janice smiled. “It’s not stupid. It’s called closure. You had a crappy childhood with even crappier parents. If fixing up this place is what you need to do to put that behind you, then I’m all for it.” She reached out and took Mariah’s hand. “I just don’t want you to be drawn back into the terror of that night.”
“Maybe I did just imagine the footsteps on the stairs,” Mariah conceded. “Maybe I only thought I was awake. And maybe that night that I thought I saw somebody in the woods, it was nothing more than my overactive imagination.” She wasn’t at all sure she believed it, but it was certainly easier to digest than the alternative.
“Kelsey told me about this boy Ryan Kent whose father hated your father. It’s very possible one of
them spray-painted the house,” Janice said as she released Mariah’s hand. “Do you remember Ryan’s dad?”
“Vaguely. He was a couple of years older than me, but I do remember him glaring at me in the halls. I just thought he was a jerk. I haven’t seen him since I’ve been back.”
“Kelsey likes Ryan.”
Mariah stared at Janice in dismay. “Isn’t that a heartbreak waiting to happen? For all we know, his father blames me for my father’s sins. Why do I suddenly have a scene from
Romeo and Juliet
flashing in my head?”
Janice laughed. “Trust me, Kelsey is far too levelheaded and independent to do something like that over a guy. Besides, she just said she kind of liked him, not that she was madly, passionately in love with him.”
“Thank God for small favors. I think I’ll take some aspirin and get some sleep,” Mariah said as she got up from the table. Janice stood as well and the two embraced.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” Mariah said. “I needed your calm tonight. I got just a little crazy.”
Janice shot her an elfish grin. “You’re the least crazy person I know.” She leaned forward and kissed Mariah on the cheek. “Get a good night’s sleep and I’ll see you in the morning.”
The night was long and sleepless as Mariah wondered if she was truly losing her mind. Was she being stalked by some unknown person or by her memories of a traumatic experience?
Certainly she knew all about post-traumatic stress syndrome. Janice had spoken to her at length about
it. A scent that brings back the horror of a specific event, a sound that triggers an intense memory—yes, she knew all about it. But was that what was happening to her? Was she suffering some form of mental illness or was somebody after her?
“C
ould you try to get a little less paint on me and a little bit more on the cabinets?” Mariah said with a laugh as Kelsey dripped white paint on her arm.
“Sorry,” Kelsey exclaimed as Mariah grabbed a rag to clean up the spot.
It had been three days since the night Mariah had thought somebody had been in the house, three days of work and fun that had managed to send the horror of that night into the back reaches of her mind.
She, Kelsey and Janice had met Jack at the pizza place the night before, where he’d received her friend’s official stamp of approval.
“There’s no question he’s hot,” she said to Mariah when Kelsey and Jack went to play an arcade game. “But there’s a strength of character in his eyes, a genuineness to his smile that is even more attractive than his hot exterior. And it’s obvious he’s crazy about you.”
“Maybe just crazy about the seventeen-year-old girl he sat behind in English,” Mariah had said.
Janice shook her head. “Don’t count on it. It’s not
the eyes of a high school boy that look at you now, and I have a feeling he’s very clear on distinguishing between the girl you were and the woman you’ve become.”
Mariah was trying desperately to keep her heart from getting totally involved with the man who obviously wanted her. She kept reminding herself that there was no way her relationship with Jack could have a happy ending.
Roger had arrived the day before to begin the painting of the exterior of the house. He’d brought with him two young men from the football team, both of whom spent more time flexing their muscles for Kelsey’s benefit than actually wielding a paintbrush.
She’d had Joel sand all the kitchen cabinets instead of starting work on replacing the tile floor. She’d decided a coat of white paint over the tired old wood would liven up the room.
She, Kelsey and Janice had been working for the past two hours, enjoying one another’s company while making slow but steady progress. Tiny danced around the kitchen floor and barked occasionally to remind them of his presence.
They’d agreed that they’d work until four, then clean up and meet Jack for a meal at the Red Dragon. As always a buzz of excitement filled Mariah at the thought of seeing Jack again.
She would have thought that by now, after she’d seen him a half-dozen times, the fluttering of joy, the sizzle of sweet anticipation, would have waned. But it was just as intense as it had been when he’d first told her he intended to kiss her.
A knock on the back door pulled her from her
thoughts of Jack. Roger peeked into the window, his broad face gleaming with the sheen of sweat.
Mariah opened the door to allow him inside. “Whew, it’s warm out there today,” he said. His white T-shirt clung to the bulk of his big body and displayed sweat rings beneath his big arms. “I was wondering if I could get some ice so we can cool down our drinks.” He nodded to Janice. “Don’t believe we’ve met.”
Janice raised her paintbrush in greeting. “I’m Janice Solomon, an old friend of Mariah’s from Chicago.”
“Nice to meet you,” Roger said.
“I’ll get you some ice.” Mariah pulled out a large pitcher from one of the cabinets, then began to fill it with ice cubes.
“Hey, the cabinets are looking good,” Roger said. “You’ve got a little drip going on there,” he added to Kelsey.
“Thanks,” Kelsey said, then giggled. “Mom keeps telling me I’m getting more paint on her and Aunt Janice than on the cabinets.”
Roger rocked back on his heels and shook his head. “I can’t believe how much you look like your mama looked the last time I saw her.” He grinned at Mariah. “You were a looker, that’s for sure. Half the guys in school were jealous of Clay, me included.”
She thrust the pitcher of ice into his hands, uncomfortable with the glint in his eyes as his gaze lingered on her. “That reminds me, I’ve been meaning to call Marianne about getting together for lunch soon.”
“I’m sure she’d like that,” he replied as he backed toward the door. “Thanks for the ice.”
“Now, that’s the way to cool a man down,” Janice said drily.
“What, with ice?” Kelsey asked.
“No, by reminding him that he has a wife,” Janice replied.
As they got back to work, old memories of Roger flittered through Mariah’s head. He had always been around in those high school days, sitting at the same lunch table as she, hanging around Clay whenever Clay was with her.
Roger had been a big guy then, big enough to pin down a girl, big enough to squash the breath out of her lungs and take by force what would never be offered. Or had Ryan Kent’s father, Doug, punished her for her father’s transgressions? Or had it maybe been Joel, who was undeniably strange?
She grabbed her paintbrush and attacked the cabinets with a new determination. These were exactly the kinds of thoughts that would make her insane and there were moments in the last two weeks when she thought she might be halfway there.
Instead of following the dark trail of thoughts of suspicion, she instead focused on the evening to come and Jack.
Jack leaned into the hot spray of shower water, rinsing out the shampoo that smelled like a fruit basket. It seemed like it was impossible anymore to buy shampoo that smelled like just shampoo. Coconut wasn’t bad; it reminded him of the old days at the public pool, where the girls would slather themselves with coconut-scented tanning lotion.
With his hair squeaky clean, he shut off the water, opened the shower door and grabbed the big towel that awaited him. He knew what he was doing—he
was focusing on shampoo because he didn’t want to think about the phone calls.
For the past three days at exactly two thirty somebody had called his cell phone and even though nothing was said, he was a hundred percent certain it was Rebecca.
He’d begun to look for her on the streets of Plains Point, in the corner of the café and everyplace else he went. The calls portended another of her appearances in his life and he hated it. He hated that he was going to have to deal with her again, especially now with Mariah in his life.
Rebecca brought chaos whenever she showed up. He hated the chaos almost as much as the sense of failure he always felt when he talked to her or saw her.
He was a healer, but he hadn’t been able to heal Rebecca. And now he didn’t want a woman who needed more than he could give. He no longer suffered a rescue complex. Rebecca had cured him of that.
Drying off, he realized he was going to have to tell Mariah about Rebecca. Mariah meant too much to him to be blindsided by whatever chaos Rebecca blew into their lives.
He pulled on his jeans and allowed thoughts of Mariah to consume him. He was falling in love with her, falling in love in a way he’d never felt with Rebecca, never dreamed was possible.
The dark-haired girl with the bright blue eyes who had captured his passion in high school had grown into a woman who had taken his heart. At the moment he couldn’t see a happy ending for them. He
knew she had no intention of remaining in Plains Point and he had spent the four years since his divorce building a life and a practice here in the small town.
Still, even knowing that they were headed in different directions in their lives, he refused to stop seeing her and he couldn’t stop himself from loving her more each time they were together.
He glanced at his clock on the nightstand. Five o’clock. He had fifteen minutes to finish getting ready and walk out the door so he wasn’t late meeting Mariah, her friend and her daughter at five thirty.
And at some point in the evening he needed to arrange some private time with Mariah, time he’d rather use to make love to her but he would instead use to talk about his ex-wife. Jesus, he’d rather have a tooth pulled.
He had to park in the next block from the Red Dragon, as it looked like they had a crowd of diners already there. He should have made a reservation, he thought as he hurried toward the front door.
Thankfully Mariah, Janice and Kelsey had already arrived and were seated at a table for four toward the back of the restaurant.
His heartbeat bumped up a notch at the sight of Mariah. Wearing a pair of jeans and a summery blouse that dipped low enough to expose a bit of cleavage, she smiled at him and he realized he’d like to see that smile every day of his life. That smile made him happy, made him want to be the man who could bring it to her face.
Throughout dinner he fought against a simmering need to get Mariah alone, to kiss those sweet lips of hers. He hadn’t lied to her when he’d told her that
the next time they made love, he wanted slow and romantic.
But underlying his desire was the dread of knowing he needed to tell her the ugly details of his marriage and warn her that he had no idea what his ex-wife was capable of doing. And he knew that once he told Mariah, she could walk away from him. Who in their right mind would want to deal with a drug-crazed ex-wife?
And the thought of losing Mariah ached in his heart, just as her sudden absence from the desk in front of him had hurt all those years ago.
When he’d run his hands up the silky softness of the backs of her legs, then had encountered the raised welts of old scars, he’d wanted to kill somebody for hurting her.
“Dr. Taylor?”
He looked across the table at Kelsey, who had obviously asked him a question he hadn’t heard. “I’m sorry, what did you say?”
“How much longer will Tiny need to wear the cast?” she asked.
“Another couple of weeks and we should be able to take it off.” He smiled at the pretty teenager. “And I thought I told you to call me Jack.”
“That dog follows Kelsey around like she gave birth to him,” Janice said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“He loves me,” Kelsey exclaimed. “And I love him.”
“Until Katie calls,” Mariah said with a warm smile to her daughter. “Then you’re off and running.”
“Tiny understands that a girl needs her friends as well as her pooches,” Kelsey replied.
Jack couldn’t help but feel the warmth and caring
that existed between the three women. It was obvious Janice and Mariah shared a deep, bonding friendship. Jack liked the elfish-looking woman who radiated a wealth of intelligence from her brown eyes.
When Janice and Kelsey left the table to go to the ladies’ room, Jack reached over and covered Mariah’s hand with his. “I need to talk to you,” he said. “Is it possible Janice and Kelsey can go on home together and I can bring you home later?”
Her eyes glistened. “What exactly do you have in mind, Dr. Taylor?”
“Keep looking at me like that and I won’t be able to get up from the table without embarrassing myself,” he replied. “Actually I need to talk to you and I’d rather not get into it here.”
She must have seen something in his eyes, something that made her realize whatever it was he wanted to talk to her about was serious. She pulled her hand from beneath his and held his gaze for a long moment. “All right, Janice can take Kelsey home and you and I will have a talk.”
Thirty minutes later Jack ushered Mariah into his living room. “Would you like a drink?” he asked.
She sat on the sofa. “Am I going to need one?”
“I don’t know, but I think I’d like one.”
“Okay, then, a glass of wine?”
He nodded and went into the kitchen. He poured her a glass of wine, then made himself a stiff Scotch on the rocks. When he returned to the living room, she took the wine from him with a tentative smile. “I have to confess, you have me a little nervous.”
“Don’t be.” He sat next to her and placed his glass on the coffee table. “I need to talk to you about my ex-wife.”
She frowned. “Are you two getting back together? If so, you don’t owe me anything, Jack.”
“No, God no, it’s nothing like that,” he replied quickly. He reached out, grabbed his drink and took a deep swallow, the bite of the Scotch burning all the way down to the pit of his stomach.
“What is it, Jack?” Mariah leaned toward him and placed a hand on his forearm. “Just tell me.”
Jack drew a deep breath and sent himself back in time, back to the beginning when he’d first met the pretty blonde who appeared to have it all, healthy ambition, intelligence and a sex-kittenish quality that Jack had found enchanting.
“She fooled me,” he finally began. “When we got married, I thought she had it all together, that the two of us could take on the world and make a real success of our life.”
“But that didn’t happen.” Mariah sat back and removed her hand from his arm.
He stood, unable to sit still while he spoke of his failure, the failure as a husband, his failure as a man. “Rebecca didn’t have it as together as I thought she did. She was needy and in the beginning I didn’t mind—I found it endearing. She was going to school for her nursing training and I was finishing up my schooling and preparing to open my clinic.”
He walked over to the window and stared outside, where darkness had fallen. “We’d been married two years when one night I woke up and she wasn’t in the bed next to me. I found her in the kitchen on her hands and knees, scrubbing the kitchen floor with a toothbrush.”
He turned to look at Mariah. “She was going over the same spot again and again and I knew by her
twitching and paranoia that she was high on drugs. She confessed that she’d tried crystal meth. She swore it was her first time and she’d never do it again and I believed her.” He offered Mariah a rueful smile. “Never believe a drug user when they’re high.”
“She didn’t quit?”
Jack shook his head and walked back to the sofa. He sank down in the cushion and once again reached for his drink. “I thought she had, or maybe I just wanted to believe it enough that I overlooked the signs of how bad it had become, and that was my failure as a husband, that and not understanding exactly what she needed of me.”
He took a deep swallow of his drink and stared down at the top of the coffee table. “I refused to notice that she looked like a walking skeleton, that she’d become secretive and almost never slept. It wasn’t until I wrote a check to cover some business expenses and it bounced that I realized she’d emptied our accounts to pay for the drugs. She begged me to forgive her, told me that she’d do anything to get better, so I sent her to rehab.”