A Man Worth Keeping

Turning to her cousin Samantha was now totally out of the question.

Josie has me. Me and no one else.

And I have no one. The realization filled her with a despair so heavy, so all-consuming she couldn’t breathe.

A rag doll without bone or muscle operating out of sheer habit and will, she turned only to realize the front door stood open, the silhouette of a man outlined in silver light watched her.

“JUST LEAVE US ALONE.”

Max heard the snap of a cell phone shutting and the distinctive sound of a fist hitting the wall. He had a sickening sense of déjà vu. How many times had he seen this while on the force? How many times had a woman’s voice, shaking with the same combination of fear and anger, haunted him? Echoed in his head long after the damage was done?

He turned to duck away, telling himself it was to let Delia have her privacy, but he knew the truth.

He wanted to pretend he didn’t hear the emotional plea for help in her voice. Because he was a coward.

But as he stepped back into the night, her voice again cut through the darkness.

“Who’s there?” she asked. She stepped into the slice of light from the open door, but the light didn’t reach her face and all he could see were her fists pressed against her stomach.

“Delia, it’s me. Max.” He was careful. Quiet. He kept the door open so he could avoid turning on the overhead lights.

He didn’t want to reveal what he knew instinctively she would want hidden. Her face, her eyes, the devils that chased her and from which she couldn’t hide.

“Sorry.” Her voice came out on a soft gust of relief and forced laughter. “You startled me.”

He did a hell of a lot more than that but he wasn’t about to push the issue.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Fine.” She swallowed and opened her hands to reveal the cell phone. When she spoke again her accent was more pronounced. “Just some family problems. You know how it is.”

He chuckled politely. She was telling half-truths, white lies that were inconsequential, while she hid something big.

She’s probably having a fight with a boyfriend or herex or her mother, for all I know, he thought, convincing himself he didn’t need to get involved.

But then she sighed and her breath caught on a hiccup and something in the way she stood changed. She was cracking, falling apart right in front of him.

And if she did that they’d both be ruined. He was not the sort of man people should trust—that had been proved time and time again. He didn’t want the burden of whatever she was about to tell him.

“Max—” she breathed. “I—”

“It’s none of my business.” He held his arms out to his side, a position of surrender. “Just like you said.”

Her hands, alabaster in the moonlight, like white birds or handkerchiefs, clutched again briefly at her stomach then relaxed. He guessed she didn’t realize how much she gave away with that gesture.

I’m sorry. The words flung themselves against his lips, but he kept his mouth shut.

He suddenly wanted to tell her that she was safe here, to at least offer her that kind of succor. But it wasn’t true. Safety was an illusion.

Besides, she’d probably prickle and tell him to mind his own business.

“Okay,” she breathed, her own act of surrender. Suddenly they were linked by whatever she wasn’t saying and he wasn’t pushing her to say. They collaborated on her pretense. “Thank you. I better get back before Josie wakes up and screams the place down.’

And just like that she was gone. Up the stairs and out of sight.

He stood still in the silence that she left behind, caught in an eddy that smelled of jasmine and fear.

Responsibility ate at him. The lingering ties that bound him to the oath he’d taken as a police officer cut off circulation to his brain and he had to fight the desire to go after her, to find out what was forcing her to the dark shadows.

He took some deep breaths. Told himself to see reason as he entered the dining room and reached over the bar to grab two beers from the fridge. He could see light under the door to the kitchen and he hoped that meant Gabe was up.

What about his responsibility to Gabe, to Alice and the Riverview? Shouldn’t he say something to them, warn them of the possible danger that had been delivered to their doorstep by Delia and Josie.

He shook his head. This was what he’d been trying to avoid for the past two years. This very spot between a rock and a hard place. He wanted no responsibility toward anyone, so that he couldn’t fail everyone. Again.

“Anyone home,” he said when he opened the kitchen door. From his office, Gabe grunted in reply. Max opened the fridge and found two of the chocolate cakes he was after—one sunken and slightly burnt on one side adorned with a note: Max, eat this one.

He grabbed it, two forks, the two beers and pushed open Gabe’s partially closed office door.

“Hi, Max,” Gabe said, barely looking up from his keyboard as he clacked away on something.

“Cake?” Max asked, sitting in the folding chair opposite the cluttered desk and the big wall calendar behind Gabe. It didn’t look good, that calendar. Through the summer and fall it had been filled with the names of guests, weddings, tour groups. So many names there had hardly been any white space beneath Gabe’s color-coded guest booking system.

Now it was all white space. The Christmas holiday marked off in black at the end of the month.

“Ah…” Gabe looked over the computer screen at Max’s cake. “Sure,” he finally said and Max extended it and the fork.

“Are we getting any more guests?” Max asked, waving his fork at the calendar. “Or am I going to have to take another cut in pay?”

“I’m paying you?”

They smirked at each other, their way of showing brotherly love. It was pretty juvenile, but it worked for them.

“Actually—” Gabe stuck the fork in his mouth, clicked on a few more keys then grabbed his blue marker from the mug at the corner of his desk and scrawled in arrival times and names on various weekends for the next two months “—I posted the spa services this morning and we got two reservations from that. The New Year’s package, once I added the complimentary massages, got three reservations. And this weekend, last minute, two women are coming from Arizona.” He added the names JoBeth Andrews and Sheila Whitefeather to Friday’s square.

“How long are they staying?”

“They didn’t say.”

“We’ve got a houseful of Southerners these days.”

Gabe turned and reached out his fork for more of the chocolate goo. “What do you mean?”

“Delia and Josie.”

“They’re from Indiana.”

Max shook his head. “No, they’re not.”