Redemption's Kiss Page 4

  And now, after ten minutes with her ex-husband, she was that same sickening knot of seething emotions—anger, pain, hurt and confusion—that she’d been when she left him.

  Oh, the irony.

  She gave him the kind of pitying look she knew he hated, and focused on getting out of there as soon as possible, while she was still in one piece.

  “You’re in denial. You should ask your therapist to work on it with you.”

  This seemed like a pretty good exit line and she turned to go. But Beau’s face contorted with fury and he lashed out, catching her wrist.

  Crying out, she wrenched away from him.

  This threw him off balance, to her sinking horror.

  Oh, no. She hadn’t meant—

  He flailed his free arm but couldn’t right himself. She saw his eyes widen with dismay and all her anger evaporated in the time it took her to lunge and catch him around the waist.

  Desperate not to let him fall and damage that leg any further, she locked her knees and they staggered a couple of steps together.

  Then Beau shoved her away. “I can do it.”

  The scar puckered and reddened with his furious pride as he snarled at her. Grunting with the effort to remain upright, he wobbled again and took another five years off her life.

  “Fine.” Stung by his rejection and sick with worry, she watched him plant the cane with painstaking care and get both his feet under him. Panting now and looking pale—God, she hoped he wasn’t still in pain—he leaned on the cane, closed his eyes and took a ragged breath. “Fall on your ass, then. See if I care.”

  The flash of a crooked smile was her only warning before those hazel eyes flew open and locked onto her face with a hard gleam. Then he sprang into action, caught her around the waist with a free hand that was still as powerful as it had ever been, swung her around and backed her into the wall.

  “Don’t.”

  Too late. He’d already settled against her and shifted so that her hips cradled his and there was no question about which parts of his body were still in fine working order.

  Just like that, her mind emptied out and there was only the pleasure and sweet remembrance of they way they felt together, the way his hands made her body hum with energy.

  Push him away, Jill. Do it.

  The intent was there, but her flesh was starved and weak and he felt as unspeakably good as ever. She struggled but only wound up gripping his muscular arms, pulling him closer when she should have been yanking herself free.

  This small acquiescence pushed him over an edge.

  With a sound that was half groan, half growl, he dropped the cane with a clatter. Then he held her head between his hands, and forced her to look into the fractured shards of green and brown light that were his brilliant eyes.

  Beau. God, Beau.

  His fingers worked through her hair until they massaged her scalp and melted her like a caramel chew left in the sun. She nearly died with the rightness of being back with him like this, seeing him like this, feeling him like this.

  All the old chemistry was still there, all the passion and the need. There was no pretending it wasn’t, not with him this close.

  “Here’s the thing,” he murmured. “You do care. I know you do. I remember what you told me in the hospital.” Oh, no. He couldn’t have heard—

  “You were out of your mind with pain and the meds,” she tried. “You have no idea what—”

  “Bullshit.” His lips thinned with stubborn anger. “I heard what you said.”

  This was too much. Apparently there was no weapon he wouldn’t use against her; she should have known. Distraught, she abandoned her pride and fought for survival by appealing to his conscience. She knew he had one buried deep somewhere.

  “Why don’t you just stab me with a knife and be done with it?” She kept her voice quiet, knowing that would affect him more than yelling. “Wouldn’t that be easier than the way you keep tearing me apart every time I get my life back together?”

  That did it. His face contorted with what she hoped was shame and his head dropped.

  She sagged with relief.

  But instead of moving away and freeing her, he rubbed his face against her cheek—his nose against her hair—and inhaled her the way a drowning man would inhale that first breath of air when he was rescued.

  “I love you,” he whispered in her ear. “I’ve always loved you, and I died loving you—”

  “Don’t.”

  “—and I wouldn’t be here now if I didn’t think you still loved me. I wouldn’t have come if I didn’t think I was ready to be the kind of husband you need. We’ve got to face down our demons, Jill. We’ve got to do it together.”

  No. Not that. Never that.

  A renewed surge of anger and adrenalin flashed through her, giving her the burst of strength she needed. Wrenching free, she hurried a few steps away, out of his reach, and wheeled around to face him in all her terrified fury. She focused on one small part of what he’d said because that was the only thing she had the courage to confront.

  “You’re not my husband anymore.”

  “I intend to change that,” he said flatly.

  Chapter 5

  Hurry, Jill. You can make it.

  Hurry…hurry…HURRY.

  But as she unceremoniously left Beau’s house and sped back down the hill to the B & B, where she belonged, she didn’t think she could make it at all. Overhead, the sun had begun its midmorning blaze and the air was thicker now, a humid sludge of unbreathable oxygen, all but useless to her.

  Run, Jill!

  No. She couldn’t run. Couldn’t risk Beau looking out the window and seeing what he’d reduced her to. If it killed her, and it just might, she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction and ammunition of knowing how he affected her. He’d only use it against her the first chance he got.

  Almost there. Hang on.

  Ahead of her loomed the B & B, her beacon, the only thing saving her from collapsing in the street. For a minute it seemed like it was coming closer, but then her legs slowed down, her lungs emptied out, and her tiny safe haven from Beau remained as unreachable as a rainbow’s end.

  Meanwhile, her frantic heart had gone berserk and seemed determined to pump out a thousand erratic beats per minute. The staccato pounded in her tight throat and battled with her breath for supremacy. Neither won, leaving her gasping and panicked.

  Passing out on the sidewalk seemed like a real possibility. With the way her luck was running today, she’d fracture her skull on the concrete as she fell, and lapse into a coma before the EMTs came.

  Maybe she should sit on the curb and wait for the spell to pass. Or maybe she should drape herself around the mailbox post so the mailman would see and rescue her when he came to deliver today’s batch of bills and catalogs.

  No. She could do this.

  One more step, Jill. You can do it. And another. Last one.

  She staggered up the stairs and through the kitchen door into her refuge, where the cooler air didn’t make one damn bit of difference.

  No sign of Blanche, though, thank God. She could really do without any witnesses to this, her first full-blown panic attack in months.

  Doubled over now, the walls spinning until only streaks of random colors and patches of sunlight passed before her eyes, she lurched into the dark pantry, slammed the door behind her and hit the cold floor right between the fifty-pound burlap sack of basmati rice and the flour bin.

  Put your head between your legs, Jill. Do it.

  She did it.

  Breathe, Jill. Just breathe. There’s no reason why you can’t.

  There was a reason. Beau had unleashed these demons inside her, and now they had her throat in an iron grip trapped inside a cage of paralyzing anxiety.

  It was too much. This was all too much: Beau and the B & B, Allegra and single motherhood, making lunch and the guests and the payroll and facing another day after this one.

  She couldn’t do it.

  She
’d made it this far, yeah, and built a so-called new life, but she’d only been faking it, and the jig was up.

  Now her horrible truth was out and the whole world would know her ugly and humiliating secret: she was a mess, unworthy of the title of mother or even woman. She couldn’t fake her way through another day.

  Breathe, Jill. Just breaaaathe.

  The constricting pressure around her chest eased up, just a little.

  It was a start. Not a good start, but a start.

  Trying again, working from her belly, she sucked in another molecule or two of air and it was a miraculous triumph, the same as giving birth to a healthy child or landing a rover on Mars.

  Panting and choked, she wheezed her way to a complete lungful and then another after that, and by then her training kicked in to save her.

  Good thoughts, Jill, she reminded herself. Think them.

  She thought about Allegra. She thought about spending a day on the beach, splashing in the waves and enjoying the sun’s bright heat on her face. She thought about warm, gooey chocolate-chip cookies with pecans, and the fluffy comfort of her down-covered bed. She thought about all the emotional progress she’d made and how far she’d come.

  The tension left her body by slow but sure degrees, and the crushing pressure let up until it no longer flattened her into a dark smudge on the floor. She took another tentative breath, just to be sure, and the lifesaving air didn’t kick and scream its way into her lungs.

  And then, just like that, it was over.

  But of course it wasn’t over at all because she was still a mess down to the marrow of her soul.

  Exhausted, she slumped back and tried to ignore the low shelf of baking products cutting across her kidneys. The world came back to her and she became aware of the distant voices of guests in the foyer…the open and close of the front door…the heavy, rubberized footfall that announced the imminent arrival of Blanche.

  Blanche. Oh, no. God help her if Blanche saw her like this.

  Calling on the kind of supreme effort that Superman used to fly around the earth’s circumference and reverse time, she heaved herself to her feet and tested out her wobbly knees. They trembled but held.

  She was just swiping some of the wetness from her face—she wasn’t sure whether it was sweat or tears and didn’t really want to know—when Blanche came into the kitchen singing, or rather rapping, Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power,” which was just…wrong.

  “Fight, fight, fight the—” Blanche chanted and, without warning, swung the pantry door open, sashayed inside and came up short when she saw Jillian.

  Jillian tried to look dignified. Blanche gaped.

  Apparently, Blanche couldn’t get a good enough look, because she reached out and flipped the light on. Jillian wasn’t prepared. Wincing, she blinked and covered her eyes. Blanche tsked and jerked Jillian’s hand down.

  The women faced off.

  Judging from her horrified expression, Blanche knew the worst, but she asked anyway. “Have you had a panic attack?”

  Jillian pulled free, flicked off the light and tried to escape before this interrogation reached full swing. “No.”

  Blanche didn’t buy the lie, which was no surprise since the woman had the unerring instincts of a baying bloodhound on an escaped convict’s trail. “You’re all wild-eyed and sweaty, missy.” She looked around, as though she expected to see a masked intruder. “What’s going on in here?”

  “Nothing.” Jillian smoothed her hair and tried not to sound too defensive. “I was just…you know, checking the supplies and—”

  Blanche’s brows inched up toward her artificial hairline. “And—what? You were crying because there weren’t enough tea bags? Don’t kid a kidder, honey. What’s wrong with you?”

  Jillian opened her mouth to dodge and deflect, but it wasn’t worth the effort. Why bother? Blanche would know soon enough anyway.

  “Beau bought the Foster place.”

  Blanche, who knew the rough outlines of the implosion of Jillian’s marriage, if not every gory detail, took this news with appropriate solemnity. With a single sharp nod, she squared her shoulders and marched to the far corner of the huge pantry, where she rummaged around behind an enormous sack of coffee beans and extracted a fifth of Patron tequila.

  Whoa. The good stuff. How much was she paying Blanche, anyway? And did Blanche drink on the job? This early? She’d have to revisit these issues later, when she wasn’t so overwrought and behind on the lunch preparations.

  And what—Oh, no.

  Blanche had by now produced a stack of Allegra’s Dora the Explorer Dixie cups, and poured a shot for each of them. “Blanche, I don’t dr—”

  Blanche shoved one of the cups at Jillian and raised the other in a toast. “Cheers. Now drink.”

  Yeah. Cheers. Whatever.

  Jillian drank.

  The liquid courage both burned and was smooth as the finest silk going down. Jillian choked just a bit on the swallow, wondering if she’d made a terrible mistake by imbibing so soon after her panicked trauma of a few minutes ago, but then a funny thing happened. She coughed and gasped and the warmth spread through her, empowering her with enough strength to get mad.

  What the hell had gotten into her?

  So Beau thought he’d reappear and turn her world upside down, did he? So he thought he could just materialize and pick up where he’d left off? So he thought she’d forgive him?

  Well, she had news for Beau: no freaking way.

  That man had already taken enough from her. She wasn’t about to give him another inch, thought or tear, not one more cry. It didn’t matter where he lived. It didn’t matter what he said. All of that was meaningless.

  The only thing that mattered now was the life with Allegra that she’d painstakingly built here at the B & B. Everything else was sound and fury, signifying nothing—especially Beau.

  Let him move down the street. It was no skin off her nose.

  Catching Blanche’s watchful eye, Jillian smiled and held out her cup. “Hit me again.”

  “That’s my girl.” Blanche beamed with approval and topped them both off. “Cheers.”

  “Salut.”

  They tapped cups and tossed back the tequila, which Jillian was really starting to appreciate. She was just debating whether a third hit would make the lunch prep and cleanup go any more smoothly, when there was a sharp knock at the kitchen door and her insides turned to stone.

  Oh, God. That wasn’t a normal knock. That was Beau’s knock. She knew it.

  And it was all well and good to stand there in the closet and tell herself to be brave and strong, but it was something else again to be brave when Beau was actually in the room with her.

  Facing him again this soon would take another thirty years off her life. She couldn’t do it.

  The blind terror must have shown on her face because Blanche took charge. Hitching up her stretchy pants and reminding Jillian of Gary Cooper adjusting his holster in High Noon before the shoot-out, she gave her a grim nod and took charge.

  “You leave him to me, honey.”

  Relieved as Jillian was by this offer, how humiliating was it to hide in her own damn pantry while her employee took care of her ex? Sure, she felt a little wobbly at the moment, but was she that big a coward?

  Blanche had cracked open the pantry door and peered out to survey the enemy. Now she retracted her head and faced Jillian with a low whistle of feminine appreciation, looking resigned to the worst possible outcome.

  “Oh, Jilly,” she said. “That man’s a god. You’ve got a big problem.”

  “Thanks for the news flash.”

  Beau knocked again, more insistently this time, and Jillian made up her mind. Hiding in the closet was for children like Allegra. She was a grown woman and needed to act like one.

  Drawing on some inner reservoir that she really hoped was filled with courage rather than suicidal tendencies, Jillian gave Blanche a gentle nudge on the shoulder.

  “Go on and le
t him in. Give me a second. I’ll be fine.”

  Blanche didn’t look at all convinced. “You sure, honey? I can tell him—”

  “Now, please.”

  Blanche sighed and looked to heaven for strength. Either that or she was praying for Jillian’s ultimate destruction to be as painless as possible. Then she marched out, a stiff soldier prepared for battle.

  The second she was gone, Jillian snatched a paper towel from the roll on the shelf and dabbed her eyes and face. No need to look like she’d been teetering on the edge of a nervous breakdown. Then she fluffed her hair and grabbed the nearest thing she could find, which turned out to be a giant bag of dried cranberries, and followed Blanche out into the airy brightness of the kitchen.

  Beau and Blanche stood there, shaking hands and sizing each other up, but his penetrating gaze went right to Jillian the second she appeared. Jillian focused on looking cool and unconcerned and trying not to feel the hum of electricity she always felt when they looked at each other. Maybe it was still there, but she didn’t have to succumb to it. Above all, there’d be no more emotional outbursts from her today.

  She set the cranberries on the counter and found her apron.

  The dog, she realized, had also come down for a visit. On a leash, he’d been sitting quietly at Beau’s feet, but now he walked over and settled on his haunches in front of Jillian, open adoration shining in his midnight eyes.

  This guy was a beauty. Maybe she had no smiles for Beau, but she sure had an ear scratch or two for his dog, who groaned with canine ecstasy the second she touched him.

  “What are you doing here, Beau?”

  “We didn’t really finish our talk.” He leaned heavily on his cane and sweat beaded on his forehead. Was he in pain? Why had he walked all the way down here in this heat? Was he trying to kill himself and give her a heart attack in the process? And why couldn’t she remember that Beau’s health or lack thereof was no longer her problem? “And I was hoping I could see Allegra and tell her I’ve moved.”

  “Hmm.” Jillian tied her apron. “This is Blanche.”