I Still Do (12 page)

“Ga-dan,” little Todd repeated. “Ga-dan day.”

“You hear that?” Will said, his voice still whip-tight. “You see what you're doing by bringing this up?”

“Ga-dan,” Todd babbled. “Ga-dan day.”

“Honey, shh,” Jamie said to her son, then turned to her oldest brother. “Will, this isn't contributing to the delinquency of a toddler. This is us making sure that you know we know what sacrifices you went through all the years after Mom and Dad—”

“Stop!” Will hissed. One minute he was on his feet, pinned to the table by the picnic bench and the beautiful cake set before him. The next, he'd leaped the barrier behind him and was stalking off the deck, still holding his beer bottle. “Stay away from me. That's the only thanks I want. All of you stay out of my life.”

Silence fell over the deck as they heard the front door slam. Will had gone.

Tom pointed to Jamie. “This was all her idea.”

Todd lifted from his father's lap to peer at the dessert sitting on the center of the table. “Ga-dan day. Want cake.”

Rising to her feet, Emily strained for the sound of Will's engine. It wasn't that she was worried about a ride home—surely one of the others would give her a lift to her house. She was wondering if leaving her behind was what he really wanted.

Well, of course leaving her behind was what he really wanted—they were supposed to discuss the dissolution of their marriage tonight after all. But did he want to be alone right now or did he need something else? A friend?

From what she could tell, out on the street an engine hadn't started up. So she took off in that direction. Jamie caught her eye as she passed. “Don't let him be alone tonight,” the other woman said. “He's never been alone on the anniversary of our parents' death. I couldn't let it happen this year. We're always together, though we've never openly acknowledged it. This time I was trying to give the anniversary a better memory.”

Emily nodded, but kept on going. This time, she decided, no matter how much he wanted distance from her, now wasn't the time for her to give Will any space.

 

Emily found him pacing the sidewalk outside his sister's house, his fingers still curled around his beer.

“Will…”

He didn't stop his agitated movement. “Let's go.”

“You're upset,” she said. “Your family is upset. Maybe you should go inside and talk—”

“Talk!” He swung around at her. “There's been too much damn talk about this. Let's go.” His strides took him toward the driver's side of his truck.

“Will—”

“No!” With a fierce swing of his arm, he threw the beer bottle against the curb, where it smashed with a startling crash.

Emily froze, shocked by the violence and the sight of broken glass glinting in the glare of a streetlight. Then she looked over at Will and saw that he was paralyzed, too, his gaze trained on the mess he'd made in the street.

She found she could move again. “All right, Will. All right. Let's leave.”

“Not yet.” His hands forked through his hair, then he moved toward the broken glass with jerky strides. “God. The kids could be hurt. Todd. Polly. I need to clean this up. I have to take care of this.”

Emily watched him gather up the largest shards, her heart falling into as many pieces. This was Will, the man who, despite his obviously roiling emotions, couldn't leave something dangerous that might possibly harm his nephew and baby niece.

I need to clean this up. I have to take care of this.

Will had taken on that responsibility thirteen years before and even in the throes of whatever was overtaking him now, that core of his wasn't shaken.

And neither was Emily's love for him, she realized. The idea that somehow she could rationalize it away or decide the unrequited nature meant it wasn't genuine wasn't working. Will was so much more than a childhood, summer romance, and she'd fallen in very real, adult love with the man he had become. With a sigh, she walked toward him. “Let me help.”

“Stay back,” he said. “I've already bandaged you once in the past week and I'm not risking another whiff of that antiseptic spray.”

She didn't ask why. In her mind, it was an aphrodisiac. If it wasn't the same to him, she didn't want to know about it.

He didn't say any more either, and maintained his silence all the way back to her house. When he pulled into her driveway, he left the motor running and stared at her garage door as if it was a movie screen or maybe a tablet that held all the secrets of the universe.

Without thinking, Emily reached over and turned the key to kill the engine. “Why don't you come in? We'll have coffee. Tea. Water. Whatever you want.” Whatever he needed. Because it was obvious that the stormy tension that caused him to throw that bottle hadn't dissipated. He was still strung tight.

“I'm no company for anyone tonight,” he said, his voice terse.

“I'll chance it. Come inside.”

She couldn't say what got him into her house. She only knew her rib cage relaxed a little from its constricting hold of her heart when he opened his door and followed her inside. He dropped to her couch, his knees spread, his elbows propped on them as he held his head in his hands.

Her heart stumbled. “Will.” She sat down on the cushion beside his, her palm against his shoulder. She felt it twitch, but she refused to take it as rejection. “I think I know a little of what you're feeling.”

He didn't lift his head, but his tone was belligerent. “Oh, yeah? You think you do?”

She didn't back down. “Yeah, I do. I lost my parents, too, remember?”

There was a charged moment of silence, then one large hand came up to squeeze hers, making her heart ache a little more. He sighed, his shoulders sagging. “Em…”

“Have you ever given yourself time to grieve?”

His head lifted. He stared at her. “Time to grieve?”

Made stupid by the odd expression on his face, she repeated it. “Yes. Time to grieve.”

He laughed, but it was a short sound and not at all humored. “There wasn't time to grieve. I had to get on with it…get on with getting the kids to school, getting the food on the table, getting the bills paid, getting five kids grown up and launched right.”

And he'd done that. He'd done it all, all that he'd just laid out for her. But still…“So you did those things. And now you have no reason to duck from why you had to do those things, Will. Thirteen years ago tonight—”

“Don't say it,” he interrupted.

She had to say it. It had to be faced. “Thirteen years ago tonight, your parents died and you—”

There was no finishing the sentence. His hands were on her upper arms before she could get it all out, and he was jerking her closer, jerking her face toward his, busying her mouth with a kiss that was more about silence than about sweetness.

There was no sweetness in the kiss whatsoever. Who was he punishing? Her? Himself? Fate?

Still, his mouth against hers was hot and burning and the shiver that snaked down her spine was a tongue of flame. The kiss went on and on, until she couldn't breathe, but the desperation ignited new fires along her nerve endings and she swayed into the dizziness instead of pulling away from it.

When he lifted his head, the oxygen felt too pure. “Please,” she whispered, wrapping her arms around him even though she didn't know what she pleaded for. “Please.”

He got to his feet, taking her up with him. “Now,” he said, the words guttural, his muscles still coiled with tension. “I need you right now.”

“Will…”

“Let me,” he said, his voice fierce. “Let me.”

He'd said that each and every time, each and every time meaning,
Let me make love to you.
Now though…

Let him not think, was what he meant.

But why would she refuse?
What
would she refuse? This was the man she loved, and he was hurting. And the press of his flesh against hers, the new kiss he was giving her, sent all those heated, soft and swollen spots of hers throbbing.

They made it to her bedroom. And then they were naked, and then they were joined. His fingers twined with hers. He held her hands to the mattress and thrust in a driven, raw rhythm until she came. He buried his face against her throat and she felt him release…and she felt wetness on her neck.

She didn't comment on it, even as there was a telltale prickle at the back of her own eyes. She didn't comment on anything. Instead, she only held him closer to her as they drifted into sleep.

In the morning, she woke alone. There was a note in her kitchen, where he'd made coffee for her. The pot was full. He hadn't even taken a single cup's worth. She thought of that, that he'd wanted nothing more from her.

Then she looked at what he'd written.

His handwriting was clear. Stark. The pen black on white paper.

I'm sorry. I need to be alone.

And she'd bet all she owned that he didn't mean just for breakfast. Life
could
be just that unfair.

A
fter the evening meal at the fire station it was standby time, and the crew was free to do as they chose until a call came in. Though he wasn't much good at concentrating the last few days, Will joined Owen to study for the continuing education course they were taking on handling hazardous materials.

But it was a waste of time, because once the books were open and their notes spread before them, Will might as well have been staring at Egyptian cuneiform. Forking his hand through his hair, he groaned. “On nights like this, I'm glad I'm the only Dailey who didn't make it to college.”

Owen looked up. “You could go now, you know. Your brothers and sisters are finished. The next tuition payment you make could be for yourself. You could learn something.”

Will frowned. “What are you talking about?” He gestured at the work in front of them. “I'm always learning.”

“The stuff you study is for the job. If you wanted, you could go to college and prepare yourself for another kind of job. A new career.”

“A new career? Like what?”

“Anything, Will,” Owen said. “You became a firefighter because there was a spot for you in the fire academy and you knew you could get through it quicker than a degree program when you needed money to take care of your family. Now you could prepare for any kind of career you want.”

Will shifted in his chair, then slid his gaze around the room. The living quarters of the station house were comfortable. From the adjoining room, he could hear a couple of his buddies arguing about what to watch on TV. For those two it was the same-old, same-old—nature documentary versus do-it-yourself house project program. One of the other firefighters wandered behind Owen, flashing Will a distracted smile as she passed, her cell phone plastered to her ear. He didn't need to overhear a word to know Anita was talking her ten-year-old through his evening routine.

He knew his second family just that well.

Another crew member was in the kitchen, probably scarfing down one of the brownies that a grateful citizen had dropped by that afternoon. They'd saved her grandmother when the elderly lady had forgotten a pot on the stove. Besides getting the fire out and calling the ambulance for the disoriented homeowner, they'd hunted down the old woman's cat that had gone into hiding once the smoke alarm started shrieking. The look on Grandma's face when he'd held the pet so she could stroke it before the ambulance drove her off was worth every long night and every sooty day he'd ever had on this job that he…

That he loved.

Wow.

He'd been so damn busy working and raising the family that he'd never really given it much thought before. He loved his job.

It was a good thing to know, he decided. A good thing to be certain about. “I'm not after another career,” he told Owen. “Now, an escape from Jamie and Max and Alex and Tom and Betsy…that I might go for.”

Owen drew his notes closer and shuffled through the pile. “You could do it, then. You could move away and be a firefighter somewhere else. Start over, like your old friend, Emily, did in moving here.”

Will opened his mouth, the instant refusal to leave his hometown on the tip of his tongue. Then he narrowed his gaze on Owen's too-carefully blank expression and leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest. “All right, you've made your point, for whatever reason you felt you needed to make it. I enjoy my job, I like where I'm doing it. So if you're so damn smart, why don't you come up with why I—well, I should say
we—
complicated the good thing we have going here by what happened in Las Vegas?”

For the life of him, he couldn't dredge up whose idea the wedding had been first. None of them had piped up with a single word of caution. And when Emily had stood beside him, her little dress hugging her curves and a silly veil perched on top of her head, he could only remember the smell of her perfume and that he was grinning like a loon and thinking he was the happiest—

Surely he hadn't been thinking at all.

He looked over at his best friend. “Well?” he demanded. “What's your answer? How could two smart, happy-in-their-careers-and-where-they-practice-them single men make the biggest mistake of their lives?”

Owen was still quite the Confucius with that no-expression expression. “Are you so sure it was a mistake?”

That left it to Will to provide the reality check. “Owen,” he said. “The women we married ran away the morning after the weddings. You can't get the librarian who said ‘I do' to say ‘hello' to you now, not even over the stinkin' phone.”

“I'm going to fix that,” Owen answered. “I've got four free days coming after this shift. If it's the last thing I do, I'm tracking Izzy down.”

Disquieted by the determination he heard in his friend's voice, Will leaned forward. “Owen, what are you talking about? You can't get Izzy to return your call.”
And I can't get Emily out of my head.

That unbidden thought sent his mind spinning off again. Not to Vegas this time, but to that last night they'd been together. The night of Jamie's awkward anniversary party.

When he'd realized what all the Daileys were gathered for, he'd been—hell, he didn't know. Furious, maybe, with a good measure of…something else he couldn't name thrown in.

He didn't want his siblings' gratitude. He wanted them to leave him alone!

Nobody understood it. Not even Emily. But that hadn't stopped him from demanding more from her, from demanding that she let him into her bed so that he could forget himself in her silken skin, her sweet smell, the soft, hot, wetness of her body.

Their passion had put them both to sleep, but he'd woken just past midnight, in an instant recognizing—just as he'd recognized that day at the Las Vegas hotel—that he was with Emily. There'd been that same sense of exhilaration, that same sense of rightness, and he'd not moved a muscle in order to leave her sleep undisturbed.

Her cheek was pillowed on his shoulder, and she was curled against him, her knee riding his thigh, her naked breast pressed to his side. He'd gone from semi-hard to poker-stiff, no surprise about that, but he'd ignored the automatic reaction to bare beauty in his arms to focus on less earthy sensations: the soft sigh of her breath against his collarbone, the silky feel of her hair against his cheek, the shiny quality of her fingernails as a trickle of moonlight found them resting against his chest.

That's right. He'd wallowed in the prettiness of the woman's fingernails!

God, he could see them in his mind's eye now, and didn't that just mean he had to, had to get a grip.

He had to get out from under the weight of the feelings he was beginning to have for her. Unless he did, they were going to take him down.

Across the table, Owen was frowning at his cell phone. Will straightened in his chair. “What's up? You heard from Izzy?”

“My grandfather,” Owen replied. “Demanding another command performance, I guess, though he just had those two weeks of Marston togetherness in Tahoe and didn't manage to convince me then of the error of my ways.”

What had once been a mom-and-pop feed and farm supply, Owen's grandfather had grown to a much bigger business. Owen's brother was ready to step into that side of things while his younger sister was eager to take over the winery the family also owned, but old Mr. Marston hadn't given up on getting his oldest grandchild under the company thumb, too.

Will had met the irascible, stubborn patriarch, but his money was on Owen. His friend looked up. “Damn it. Get this—the old buzzard has learned to text message. Next thing you know he'll have found out about what happened in Las Vegas.”

“I thought what happened there was supposed to stay there,” Will muttered.

Is that where they'd made their mistake? All four of them thinking it was a lark instead of legal?

But hell, none of them was that dumb. The night they'd wed on a whim, it hadn't felt whimsical at all. It had felt like a hell of a good idea.

But an idea that had run its course all the same, he told himself, as he pulled out his own phone. Without allowing a moment for second thoughts, he searched his address book then called Emily's number. Tonight they'd plan a course of action regarding what to do about this marriage business.

It was time, wasn't it? Owen was going to track down his wife, while Will was going to find his way out of the trap he and Emily found themselves in.

She answered on the first ring. “Eliot?” she said, her voice breathless.

Will lifted the phone to stare at it a moment, then he slammed it back against his ear. “Who's Eliot?”

“Oh. Will.” She laughed a little.

What the hell was so funny? He cleared his throat. “Did I catch you at a bad time?”

“No, no. I just got back from drinks—”

“With Eliot?”

She laughed again. “Yes. He's that professor I told you about, and he forgot a book at the restaurant. I brought it home with me.”

“You're dating a professor?”

“No, Dad.” She huffed a little and he could imagine the annoyed expression on her face. “It's a business thing. Remember, the man who was interested in my film and book club idea?”

“Oh, that.” Had he really sounded fatherly? Maybe he could live with fatherly. “Is this guy married? Is he a thousand years old?”

“He doesn't wear a wedding ring—”

“You and I don't either.” Though when had Emily taken hers off? He remembered sliding it on under the approving gaze of Reverend Elvis, but he hadn't seen her wearing it since. “So how old is this Eliot?”

“He's thirty-five. Eliot spent a few years in Hollywood—actually starred on a soap for a while—before realizing he'd rather teach about films than try to break into them.”

Some pretty boy, wannabe actor had been out tonight having drinks with Will's wife.

Earlier, the idea of what he and Emily had done had felt like a weight he was carrying on his shoulders. But this, this idea that his Emily was out with someone else—would likely be out with other someone elses once they dissolved the marriage—felt like a pair of hands strangling him around the throat.

From the minute he'd seen her again, he'd done everything he could to tie himself to her—making sure that they spent every moment together in Las Vegas, not once balking at the crazy idea of marrying her, not even when he'd gotten a glimpse of the Bible-toting, bling-wearing Elvis. Now his throat was closing up at the idea of her with another man.

So tight he couldn't get out the words that would precipitate the end of their marriage.

“Emily…” His voice didn't sound like his own. “Emily, we have to—”

The alarm in the station house sounded. Damn. Another delay. He rose, his mindset already switching from personal to professional. “Gotta go, Em.” If she responded before he clicked off, he didn't hear her voice.

 

It was a residential fire and even in the dark they could smell and see the heavy black smoke as they arrived. The home was two stories, a vestibule room attaching the living area to the garage. Over the wide garage entrance was a metal canopy extending out another ten feet. It appeared the fire had started in the vestibule and moved to both house and garage.

Dressed in turnout gear, helmet, hood, gloves, boots and self-contained breathing apparatus, the firefighters got to work. Owen and others from a second engine moved toward the house itself, while Will and Anita approached the open garage with a charged hoseline. Will had the nozzle in hand, Anita, carrying an ax, backed him up as they moved under the canopy and then into the garage.

He could see the flames had spread rapidly across the ceiling and assumed they were finding plenty of fuel in the enclosed attic area. Their hose was having some effect, though, and he only hoped that the others were doing as well in the house. The homeowner had met them out front and said the family had evacuated, so there were no worries about anyone besides his fellow firefighters.

When their SCBAs were running low on air, he and Anita backed out for a bottle change. After replacing their cylinders, they went right back in and resumed putting water on the fire. He heard a muffled sound from Anita, but before he could look around, debris fell from the ceiling onto his head. The heavy thunk to his helmet sent him to his knees.

Damn.
Holding fast to the nozzle, Will struggled back to his feet and didn't protest when Anita indicated they needed to get the hell out. Only three minutes into their second bottles of air and conditions were deteriorating.

Once again, they backed out of the garage door, but remained near the doorway and under the canopy. With the hose line still in operation, this time Will made a conscious choice to go to his knees so he could better direct the nozzle toward the fire consuming the garage ceiling.

Then, disaster. Without a breath of warning, the overhanging canopy crashed down. Metal slammed into Will's back, hitting his tank and knocking off his helmet. He fell to the concrete as heavy debris dropped. Imprisoning him. The dark was absolute. Smoky, and absolute.