Someone to Watch Over Me (11 page)

“I’m trying, but…” She sighed heavily, her bottom lip trembling and tears glistening in her eyes.

“No,” he said. “No, no, no. Don’t do that. Kathie, you’ll figure it out. I know you will.”

And she’d tell him what was wrong. He’d have it out of her before the weekend was over.

Sad tears spilled over and rolled down her cheeks.

“Ah, Kath.” He didn’t have a dry shoulder left to offer, but she was short enough that he could tuck her against his chest and dry her tears and even coax a smile out of her before he finally sent her on her way.

He stood there and watched her drive off, part of him thinking something bad was going on and the other part thinking she’d done something horrifying like develop a crush on a guy who’d been out all of twice with one of her friends, or something equally disastrous as that.

Women.
They were so dramatic. So emotional.

He’d soothed and patted and dried more tears in the past few months than he thought he could stand, and at the moment, he felt utterly weary, utterly drained.

Then he looked up and happened to catch sight of Gwen standing in her backyard. He didn’t think he’d ever been so glad to see anyone in his entire life.

Gwen saw him out on the deck with one of his sisters. At least he was fully dressed now.

She’d blushed at the way he’d looked before, and she was instantly ashamed of herself.

The man was so sad, he seemed to ache with it, and he was doing his best to hold his family together, and what was she doing?

Thinking he looked really nice fresh from the shower.

Bad, Gwen.

But he was beautiful. Like the Greek statues that had made Gwen blush when she’d gone to Europe with a church group one summer.

Bad, bad Gwen.

Jax really was amazing in every way, and she was starting to fear that her reaction to him was simply that—a reaction purely to him. And nothing was ever going to really happen between her and him.

“Gwen?”

She nearly jumped out of her own skin, looked up and there he was.

What was she going to do with him now?

S
he realized with dismay that he had bare feet, wet hair and that he smelled really good. Gwen curled her bottom lip over her teeth and bit down to keep from doing or saying anything she shouldn’t.

“You okay?” he asked.

She nodded. “You?”

“Yeah. I finally got the water buckets calmed down and sent them on their way.”

“The water buckets?”

“My weeping sisters,” he said. “You have to promise me one thing. One very important thing.”

“Okay,” she said.

“I’m serious. I need this promise, or I’m going to have to march back to that lonely house and lock myself away from the world until morning.”

He grinned when he said it, and despite the fact that he looked bone weary, the charm shone through. It struck her that she’d never seen Jax at his ultracharming best. She’d only seen him exhausted and slammed by grief, struggling to make the best of an awful situation.

Jax at his charming best…She wasn’t sure if her heart could take that.

“Well,” he said. “You gonna promise?”

“What do you need me to promise?”

“That not a single tear will fall down your pretty face tonight.”

She laughed. “That’s it? No tears?”

“No tears.”

“The water buckets were too much for you?” she guessed.

He nodded solemnly. “Promise?”

“I promise.”

“Thank you,” he said, looking like she’d granted him a reprieve from a firing squad. “I hate it when women cry.”

“Oh, please. You’re a pro at handling women’s tears.”

“But I hate it. I never know what to do.”

“Jax, you know exactly what to do.”

“What?” he asked

“You listen. You listen really well.”

He shrugged. “Well, if I’m standing right there, what choice do I have?”

“You could walk away. Lots of men do. You could get mad, just because you don’t know what to do. Men do that, too. They get impatient. They act like whatever’s wrong really isn’t that important. Or like tears are the worst thing in the world.”

“They are,” he said.

“Are not.” Gwen laughed. He’d made her laugh about tears, when she’d shed buckets herself this past year.

“There is nothing funny about this,” he said. “I grew up in a house with four women. Plus my father had four sisters and all of them had daughters. Can you imagine how many crying women have been inside that house over the years?”

“And I’m sure you took good care of them all,” she said. “You have wonderful shoulders to cry on, and great arms, so you can hold a woman tight and make her feel like you can protect her from anything. You listen to her problems and you’re patient and kind and…You’re great with them. I should know. I’ve cried on your shoulder before.”

He hesitated, looked away for a moment, then back at her again. So seriously, he said, “It never seems like enough.”

“It’s a lot. Especially when a woman’s upset,” she promised him. “And it’s not like it’s up to you to solve everyone’s problems. Even if they make you feel like that sometimes.”

“I want to…I like fixing things for people.”

“Sure you do. And I can tell you’re really good at it. But you can’t fix everything. No one could expect you to. You’re just a man.”

A strong man. A determined one. A very good one.

She might not understand a lot about him and the way he lived his life, but she was sure that he was good to the core.

And realizing it made her like him even more.

Just what she needed.

“I promise I won’t cry tonight. And I’ll try not to cry tomorrow. Or the day after. Or the day after that.”

He shrugged, grinning slightly. “Hey, I’m not looking for miracles here. Tonight will do.”

“No, it’s time I stopped. I want to. I want my life to be different. To be better. And it’s all your fault.”

“My fault?”

She nodded. “You helped me.”

“Gwen, I didn’t do anything.”

“Yes, you did. You listened to me, and you cared about what happened and you told me it wasn’t my fault, and you helped me to stop feeling so sorry for myself.”

“All that?” He was skeptical. “No way.”

“You did.”

She couldn’t resist anymore. She touched him. Just a hand on his arm. He pulled his arm back until they were palm to palm, and then he wrapped his fingers around hers and held on.

She closed her eyes and dipped her head down, until the top of it was resting against his chest.

“You know the best part of all?” she whispered.

“What?”

“When I’m with you, even close to you like this, I’m not afraid.” She lifted her head and looked at him again. “And you can’t know what that means to me, Jax. I was afraid for so long. I thought I always would be, and with you, the fear is just gone.”

He looked like he just didn’t understand or like he couldn’t quite believe her when she said how important that was. That he didn’t see what he gave to everyone around him.

A good man who didn’t know he was one.

What was she supposed to do about that?

She blinked once, twice, three times, her vision blurry from strong feelings she couldn’t really explain. Gratitude was part of it. Happiness was another. Wonder. A hint of fear. Not about him being close but about all that she might come to feel for him if she let this go on, and that was a whole new kind of fear for her.

“Hey,” he said, coming ever closer, his hand cupping the side of her face. “You promised. No more tears tonight.”

“I know,” she said, her voice breaking. “Which means, I really have to go.”

“No. Gwen, don’t.”

She thought he would have pulled her into his arms and let her cry it out if she’d let him. But she really meant it—
she wanted to be done mourning, and she didn’t want to be one more woman whose life he was supposed to fix. She wanted to help him instead.

Did the man ever let anyone truly help him?

Still, she stood there caught up in the wonder of him. The soft touch of his hand at the side of her face and his other hand clasped in hers.

She wanted to bury her nose against him and let those big, strong arms of his curl around her and tuck her against him.

He had the best hands, and he treated a woman like a piece of fine china he feared he might break. She’d never understood how truly wonderful it could be or how powerful, simply to have a man touch her face or hold her tight. He made her want things she wasn’t going to let herself have.

“I’m sorry. But really, I have to go,” she said, and turned around and fled.

He called an hour later, sounding tentative and bewildered. “Are you okay?”

“Yes.”

“What did I do, Gwen?”

“To upset me? Nothing.”

“Of course I did.”

“No. It wasn’t you. It was just…everything. Other things,” she clarified.
The way she felt about him.
All the things she couldn’t begin to figure out.

It had sounded so simple at first. He made her feel better. Finally, it seemed she was better. And she was attracted to him. Maybe just him. Or maybe it was just time, and she was ready and she could get on with her life and not be afraid.

Whatever it was, she needed to know. She couldn’t figure out what to do without knowing what was going on
here, and if she didn’t know what to do, she might just drift on for another year, wasting time and feeling sorry for herself. She couldn’t let that happen.

“Let me help,” he insisted, which had her thinking,
He’s just the sweetest thing.

“You do,” she told him. Every day, in a dozen different ways.

“And I’m sorry about my sisters. About what they said.”

“Jax, it’s okay.”

“They had no right to say what they did. They’re just a mess over losing our mother—”

“I know, and it’s okay.”

“And I didn’t even think about people seeing us together and talking, but I should have. People are going to think something’s going on between us. Does that bother you?”

“No.”

“I could try to set them straight—”

“No. Don’t worry about it. People will think what they want, and some of them love to think the worst of everyone. I’m not going to stay away from you just because of what some people might say or think.”

“Okay. If you’re sure—”

“I am. I want to help you—”

“You are,” he insisted. “Probably a lot more than I’m helping you. I don’t know what I’d do without you right now, Gwen.”

She frowned. It was not what she was expecting at all. She didn’t want to think he was even nicer than she’d already believed. She didn’t want to like him any more than she already did.

“I don’t think I’ve ever really let myself depend on a woman like this before. Except maybe my mother,” he
said. When she still didn’t say anything, because she had no idea what to say, he added, “Not that I think of you in any kind of motherly way.”

Gwen laughed at that.

“You don’t see me in any sort of fatherly way, do you?” he asked.

“No.”

“Or a brotherly way?”

“No.”

“Well, I’m glad we cleared that up,” he said. “And I’m really glad we’re not doing the sibling thing, because I really don’t think I could handle having another sister right now. Of course, you’re capable of cleaning out closets without weeping, and you don’t recoil in horror when I mention getting rid of family heirlooms, like eggbeaters and pot holders and blenders that were made sometime during the Vietnam War, and I can’t tell you how important that is to me right now.”

“Your sisters didn’t want you to get rid of the eggbeaters?”

“Well, you know, it’s a big step and they’re just not ready. Not yet.”

Gwen laughed, because he’d predicted that he wouldn’t even be able to get rid of a box of kitchen utensils without a fight, and he was right.

“They’re horrified by the work you and I’ve done. I had six bags of trash in the laundry room, waiting for garbage-collection day. Katie opened them up and found dish towels at the top of one. I swear, I think she took that bag and put it in the trunk of her car so I couldn’t throw it away. Do you think they need psychiatric help?”

“No, I think they just need time. You can have some time, too, you know.”

“No, I have to do this now.”

Some people coped with bad things by keeping as busy as they could, by trying not to even give themselves time to think, time to grieve. She suspected Jax was one of those people.

And it was going to catch up to him someday. She knew that. Gwen had tried to hide from what happened to her, to stay so quiet and so still and keep her head down so far, that no bad thing could possibly find her again.

But that sort of behavior caught up to everyone in the end.

“Say you’ll keep helping me with all this stuff in the house?” Jax asked.

“I will.”

As coping mechanisms went, his was at least practical. They hadn’t actually gotten rid of anything, just organized and boxed. No really hard decisions had been made. They hadn’t even gone into his mother’s room, which poor Romeo had commandeered as his own for the time being.

“Okay,” Jax said. “See you tomorrow after work?”

“Actually, I’m off tomorrow, so I’ll be over in the morning, if you like.”

“Yes, please.”

“Tell Romeo good-night for me.”

“Gwen, he’s a dog. He doesn’t speak English.”

“Dogs are capable of understanding a number of words, and you know it. Otherwise, you couldn’t train them to obey commands.”

“Well, I doubt good-night is one of them.”

“I bet he knows what it means when you tell him it’s time to go to bed. Give it a try, and see what he does.”

“This is ridiculous,” he complained.

But it was all for show, she thought. The dog was growing on him. “Just do it.”

“All right. All right. Let me find the dog. Romeo!” he yelled. “There he is. Romeo, time to go to bed. Yeah, bed. Go to bed, Romeo.”

“What’s he doing?” she asked.

“He’s trotting down the hall.”

“There you go. He’s a good boy.”

“Wait. He isn’t going into the bedroom. Nope. He’s heading for the back bedroom where we’re storing boxes of things we’ve already sorted through, and he’s…Hey. Wait a minute! He’s in one of the boxes nosing around. Romeo!”

Gwen laughed. “What did he want?”

“I don’t know. What does he ever want? It’s always something. Romeo, what have you got?”

“Well?”

Jax got really quiet.

“What is it?” Gwen asked.

“One of my mother’s aprons. He’s trotting down the hall with an apron in his mouth. Maybe I could get him a job in a kitchen.”

“A kitchen?”

“Yeah. I was thinking, if I can’t get rid of him in the normal way, I might be able to find him a job. Lots of dogs work for their keep, you know?”

“No, I didn’t know.”

“Maybe he wants to be a chef. Romeo, cook! Cook, Romeo!”

Gwen laughed. “I don’t think that plan’s going to work. I’ve never seen a dog who cooked.”

“Guess not. He’s not even heading for the kitchen. He’s heading into my mother’s bedroom instead, and…”

The teasing sound was gone. She heard Jax grumble softly, heard the dog whine pitifully and then start to whimper, as if he was crying.

“Jax? What’s wrong?”

‘“I’ve gotta go—”

“No. Wait—”

“I’m sorry. I can’t…Not right now.”

“Jax?” But it was too late. He’d broken the connection.

Gwen waited all of ten seconds, worrying and imagining what might have gone wrong, telling herself they were just friends and new friends at that, and that the man deserved some privacy if he wanted it.

All he had to do was ask her to come over, if he’d wanted her to, and he hadn’t. But she’d never been any good at asking for help, either, when she needed it, and she’d spent a lot of time grieving and miserably alone.

She didn’t want him to have to do that.

She grabbed her sandals and the house keys and off she went. Standing at the back door to his mother’s house, she hesitated, thinking she was being pushy and maybe even nosy. But she was worried, too.

She knocked softly on the screen door. The main one was open. It was a cool but comfortable night.

“Jax?” she called out.

“Back here,” he answered. “In my mother’s room.”