The Street Where She Lives

The furniture was new, tasteful and very Rachel. In other words, expensive. And yet, he could see Emily racing through these rooms, sliding down the pole from one floor to another, perfectly at home.

“You’re really going to stay home for a while?” she asked him.

Ben’s insides knotted at the small, hopeful tone, even more so than at the word home. He’d spent most of his childhood here in South Village trying to get out and all of his adulthood trying to forget.

Now he was back, indefinitely.

Dropping his things on the bed in the room that was to be his for the duration, he turned to her. “Yep.” Because she was looking unsure, he opened his arms, relieved when she leaped into them, hugging him tight.

“I know you said you would.” Her head didn’t come up to his shoulder. Against his chest, she smiled. “And you haven’t ever broken a promise, I just wanted to hear you say it again.”

God, she was young. She was so smart that sometimes he forgot how young she was. Honest relief flooded him that he was able to give her something, anything, other than his usual phone call. “I’ll stay as long as it takes,” he promised, thinking of Asada. He’d gone to see Agent Brewer on the way here, but there’d been no news.

So he concentrated on the here and now, how Rachel had looked downstairs, how she’d stopped his heart with just her eyes and how incredible it felt holding his kid—God, his kid. He wondered at the sharp ache in his heart. Why did it hurt so much to love her? “How does that sound, my staying as long as it takes?”

A grin split her face, a glorious answer, and his strange hurt faded.

Face flushed with happiness, she wriggled away. She danced and whirled to the door, all gangly arms and legs, and for a moment, Ben was lost in time, seeing Rachel as she’d looked thirteen years prior.

She’d been all arms and legs, too, he remembered. And the pang came back, sharper than before. What a miserable time in his life that had been, struggling to survive when he’d been little more than a kid. And Rachel had been his bright spot.

His hope.

Just as Emily was now.

“I’m gonna cook tonight,” she announced proudly. “A celebration dinner. Mac and cheese.”

“Celebration?” He doubted Rachel would be up for that. Her once creamy skin had seemed nearly transparent and bruised with exhaustion. She’d barely been able to hold her head up as she’d flashed those huge, angry, hurting eyes on him. If he hadn’t still been so unnerved at being here, so tensed and battle-ready, it might have broken his heart. “I don’t think tonight is a good night—”

“It’s a perfect night,” Emily assured him. “Mom’s where she wants to be and I have both my parents in the same place.”

Uh-oh. Ben might claim not to know a lot about the intricate workings of a female mind, but he knew warning signals when they blared in his brain.

And man, were they ever blaring now. “You know my being here is because you managed, God knows how, to pull a fast one on your mom.” And because a madman wants to destroy me. “Not because she and I are back together.”

Emily sobered. “Are you mad at me?”

With Asada on the loose he’d have had to come regardless. “No,” he said honestly.

“Mom’s mad.”

“Good guess. Em…tell me you know this is just temporary.”

“You just wait.” She twirled again and executed some sort of ballet movement that had his eyes crossing as he tried to follow her. “You’re going to love being here so much,” she said, breathless now, “that you won’t want to ever leave us.”

Damn. “Emmie—”

“Gotta get the dinner started. Catch ya in a few!”

And she was gone, leaving Ben blinking in her dust.

He was doing the right thing, he assured himself as he sank to the bed. Though he felt like he was suffocating here, he was doing the right thing.

He would not do as he’d been doing for years. He would not run and lose himself in some jungle. Or in some guerilla skirmish. Or in some forsaken desert somewhere. His camera and his need to capture the good photo, the story would have to wait this time.

He slipped his hand into his pocket, bringing out a copy of the second letter he’d received from Asada, which had been farther down in his stack of mail back in the South American jungle.

The authorities had the original, another fastidiously clean piece of stationary with precise folds and meticulous handwriting. In contrast to the pristine paper, the text was enough to make him feel sick: “Dear Ben, Just as you have ruined my life, I will ruin yours. Your most faithful enemy, Manuel Asada.”

The South American authorities were on Ben’s side completely. Asada had escaped, and this wasn’t only an embarrassment, but a huge threat. If they didn’t find him, it was only a matter of time before he’d set up another charity scam or kill without conscience to protect his business.

Or come here to exact revenge…if he hadn’t already. Ben felt a terrible, agonizing certainty Asada had somehow caused Rachel’s accident.

It wouldn’t happen again. Yes, eventually, Ben would have to explain the regular police drive-bys to Rachel and Emily, but now that he’d seen Rachel and the extent of her injuries, he was more convinced than ever she shouldn’t know until she was stronger.

Besides, how did one explain to his daughter and the woman who hated him that he’d inadvertently put their lives on the line? That there was a madman out to get them? It would make Rachel all the more dependent on him, something she’d hate with every fiber of her being.

Right or wrong, he had to wait. And if in the meantime, it put more pressure on him to protect them, to be something he’d never been able to be in Rachel’s eyes, then so be it. It was nothing less than he deserved for bringing them this danger in the first place.

BEN FOUND RACHEL right where he’d left her, sitting in her chair in the spacious living room, facing the huge set of windows. That damn ugly cap was still in place, hiding her hair from him. Her right arm and leg were in air casts. He knew that her ribs were cracked and that sitting there for so long must be torture. But he knew also that it had to be painful to shift positions.

She should have looked ridiculous. Miserable. At the very least, pathetic.

Instead, she looked as beautiful as ever. Maybe more so. Despite the fading bruises, her face was aristocratic, her skin smooth. Her body, what little he could see of it, was still long and sleek, and still made him yearn.

He could vividly remember a long-ago night when they’d sat in a hidden-away spot in the botanical gardens behind city hall. Rachel’s long blond hair rippling over his arm, that lithe, soft body spread beneath his in the grass, her huge, melting eyes filled with heat and fear and hope as she gave herself for the first time, to him. His first time, too, and in spite of the fact their birth control had failed them—the condom broke—that night still stood unrivaled to anything he’d experienced since.

She didn’t acknowledge him as he moved into the living room, and he wanted her to. “What happened to the person who hit you?” he asked.

“They never found him.”

He sucked in a breath. Oh yeah, Asada had done it.

Emily could be next.

Ben’s stomach quivered as he mentally added this to the long list of things he’d screwed up. Are you good for anything, Benny boy? No. No, he wasn’t.

Unaware of his personal hell, Rachel stared down at her hands, her words coming out slowly. “I’d almost rather it be a hit-and-run than someone who’d just made a terrible mistake. This…this torture of mine wouldn’t be erased by destroying someone else’s life as well.”

That Rachel had once nearly destroyed his life didn’t escape him. By the time she’d finished with him, Ben had felt every bit as battered and bruised as she looked now, except his injuries had been invisible.

Did she really look at him and feel nothing? And why did he care? Did he feel something when he looked at her?

Yes, he could admit, he did. Mostly anger and humiliation. She’d been taught to not express herself, but somehow he’d gotten Rachel to open up to him. It’d been like watching a flower bloom, beautiful and arousing. They’d been two lost souls made into one, yet she’d thrown it away with an ease that chilled him even now.

Good, there was more of that anger he needed in order to keep his distance. He’d just see her comfortable, then go make some calls regarding her accident and then stay away from her until he could leave. But when he stepped closer, took in her grim expression, her pale face, the way her good hand clasped her casted one, he was filled with alarm to see her trembling with the effort to remain upright. “Hey, let’s get you get into bed.”

She didn’t respond, which made him feel like an unwelcome slug. Not a new feeling for him, but it bugged him nevertheless. He put himself in her line of vision and reached out for the cap that shaded her eyes from him.