Shadows from the Grave (43 page)

Annie was so scared she could hardly move. She was taking a big, big chance by confronting Chase like this. If it went wrong, she was going to be completely humiliated but, given how she had run earlier in the week, she figured she almost deserved it. She followed Jackie and Richard to the back of the house and waited while they went outside. She could have gone around the side of the house when she pulled up, but she had wanted to do things the right way. Plus, trying the front door first had bought her a few minutes to calm her nerves.

“Chase, you have a visitor,” Richard announced.

When Chase looked up, Annie stepped outside. “Hi,” she said. She ignored everyone else, who had pretty much frozen in place to watch the tableau unfold.

Chase stayed seated, but he straightened and put his feet on the ground. “Well, fancy seeing you here. Nice of you to join us. How was your vacation?” His tone was acidic, and Annie could see that he was holding on to his temper by a thread.

“It was helpful.” She struggled to keep her voice calm. “I accomplished what I needed to.”

“Well, good for you.” Chase picked up his glass and took a long drink of tea, dismissing her.

“We should go in,” Jason said. Around the pool, everyone started to stand, but Annie stopped them.

“I’d rather you didn’t. I think you all need to stay, if you don’t mind. I have something to say to Chase, and I’d like you all to hear it,” she said.

Richard caught Jason’s eye and nodded. “Okay. Then I guess we’ll stay.” He sat back down and waited.

Annie closed her eyes and pulled in a breath; somewhere, she found the strength to move closer to Chase. When she was almost close enough to touch him, she dropped down to one knee and held the flowers out to him. They shook with a fine tremor that she couldn’t control. For the first time since she had stepped out of the house, she felt she had shocked him. A stillness came over him, and some of the anger left his eyes.

“I hurt you. I’m sorry. I was very wrong to leave the way I did, but I was scared, Chase. That doesn’t make it right, but that’s the truth of it. After we left the hospital from seeing Katy, everything hit me, and I just… I ran. No excuses. I ran to my mother.”

“Yeah, I got your message,” he said. “Thanks for that.”

Annie winced, but she couldn’t defend herself. “I owe you some very big apologies, there’s no doubt. I handled things badly. I’m so sorry, sorrier than I can even tell you.” She extended the flowers again. Chase’s eyes dropped to them.

“Take them, please,” she begged.

He sighed and reluctantly took the flowers from her hand. “Kind of a puny bouquet.”

Annie flushed. “Well, I didn’t think about the flowers until I pulled up. I kind of pilfered them from the front of the house. Sorry, Jackie,” she said, not taking her eyes off Chase. When Ethan choked off a laugh behind her, she saw Chase’s lips twitch, a tiny movement, but a flicker of a smile, no less.

“In any event, it’s supposed to be the thought that counts, right?” she asked. “So anyhow, speaking of that thought, none of this past week has been about you, or us. It’s been about me. I needed to know that what I was doing, what I was feeling, that it was right. That I wasn’t hurting you by being in your life, Chase. I had to accept
myself
before I could accept us. Do you understand?”

Very carefully, Chase laid the flowers on the table beside him. “I guess I understand. This was about your past? All this week, this not hearing from you. This not knowing?”

Annie nodded. “It was. So I wanted to come here today to tell you that. And I wanted to tell you something else, too.” Her throat closed up, and she had to take some deep breaths in order to clear it. “God, this is so hard.”

“Just say it, Annie. Get it over with,” Chase said quietly. From the way his eyes had shuttered, Annie realized he thought she was breaking up with him for good.

“I love you. Okay? You make me so happy, Chase, and I don’t want to spend another day without you.” She fumbled with the watch-sized jewelry box and finally managed to get the thing open. She turned it toward Chase and, throwing all her cards on the table, said, “Will you marry me, Richard Chase Hudson? Share your life with me? And your crazy, sweet cat?”

~ * * * ~

Chase’s heart was thudding so hard, he was sure the entire family could hear it. When Annie had walked out of the house, he thought he knew why she was here. When she apologized, he knew without a doubt it was over. Why she was telling him in front of everyone else, he couldn’t figure out, but he had been the one who made her promise to break it off to his face. He figured he didn’t have anyone else to blame when she kept that promise.

But when she had pulled out the watch box and asked him to marry her, all rational thought had left his brain. He didn’t know how much time had passed, but someone cleared their throat, and Annie lowered the hand that held the box. She knee-walked a little closer and held it out again.

“Chase? Please say something?” she asked. He finally was able to move his gaze to the box and, when he did, the contents startled a laugh out of him. He tried to stop, but the laughter still spilled out. Reaching out, he took the box from her.

“Oh, God. What am I supposed to do with this?” he asked, a few chuckles escaping as he lifted the sparkling, decorated cat collar out of the box. “Annie?”

Annie’s cheeks were bright flags of red, and she shrugged. “I thought about a ring, but you’re not into fancy jewelry. I couldn’t just come in here and propose empty-handed. I passed a pet store on the way here, and I just thought… Well, with Murphy…” Her voice died off.

Chase slowly stood, keeping the collar in one hand. He extended the other to Annie. “Get up, please.” She took his hand and let him assist her to her feet. “Let me get this straight. Sound familiar?” he asked.

Annie nodded, remembering their conversation from the first night they’d made love.

“So you let me tell you I love you for the first time, the day I almost lose you to a murderer, and less than two days later, you leave town. Without a word to me. Am I correct so far?” he asked.

“You are,” she mumbled.

“Good. So you go nearly a week, and you don’t bother to contact me. Then you waltz back in here, in the middle of my family, and make your apologies for hurting me. And you give me some puny flowers you stole from my mother’s garden. Right?”

Annie ducked her head, but nodded.

“Chase, stop,” Beth said. “That’s cruel.”

He ignored his sister and tipped Annie’s chin up so that she was looking at him. When he saw that Annie understood what he was doing, he continued. “Then you give me a pretty, but somewhat odd, gift. This collar,” he said, holding it up. “And you ask me to marry you. Have I missed anything?”

“Actually, Counselor, you have. You missed the whole ‘I love you’ part and the part about your zany cat,” Annie said with a tremulous smile.

“Oh, well, then,” he said, his own smile lighting up his face. “In that case, I guess I had better say yes. Don’t you think?”

“I’d advise you to,” she said. “I think you would find it worth your while.”

Chase couldn’t hold back any longer. He bent down and, his lips an inch away from Annie’s, whispered, “Then yes, I will be more than happy to marry you, and to share my cat with you, and any other cat babies we have.” He closed the distance between them and kissed her fully. That they were in front of everyone didn’t even enter his mind. When he finally pulled back a few minutes later, he was surprised to find that they were the only two people still on the patio.

“I guess they wanted to give us some privacy,” Annie said.

Chase smiled. “I guess so. Here, help me with this.” He put the collar on his wrist and tried to fasten it.

“What are you doing?” Annie asked, laughing. “I meant it as a symbolic gift, not something you should actually wear.”

“I know. I just want to try it on. See how it looks. I’ve never been engaged before, you know.” Chase got the collar fastened and picked her up in a tight hug, lifting her so that her face was level with his. “I love you, you know that?”

Annie nodded, framing his face with her hands. “I know. And that’s a miracle to me, that you do love me. I love you back, Chase.”

~ * * * ~

This time when he kissed her, a heartfelt sigh of relief moved through the rest of the family, who were watching from inside the house.

“Thank God,” Beth said. “I thought I was going to have to fly out to Virginia and drag her home.” She turned to Jason. “Did you get it all?” When Annie had produced the flowers, Jason had pulled out his phone and started recording.

Jason shook his phone at her. “Got it, emailed it to everyone, and am looking forward to teasing them mightily with it over the next fifty years or so.”

Richard spoke from where he stood behind Jackie. “Guess this means we’ve got two weddings to plan.”

Jackie smiled up at him. “Guess it does.”

Not long after Chase accepted Annie’s proposal, Gordon showed up. He didn’t say much when he saw Annie with Chase, just welcomed her home. He accepted a plate of food from Jackie and sat in the dining room to eat. Everyone else joined him with post-dinner coffee and iced tea making the rounds. When he saw the collar on Chase’s wrist, however, he looked up from his plate.

“Interesting accessory you have there. Trying to start a new trend?”

Chase held up his hand and waggled it back and forth, causing the collar to slide around. “This is my engagement ring, I’ll have you know. Be nice.”

“Engagement? Really?” Gordon looked from Chase to Annie for confirmation. He smiled. “I’ll be damned.”

“Probably,” Chase agreed. “So what have you been up to? Any word yet on your reinstatement?”

Gordon pushed his empty plate away. “Yeah. It’s not happening.”

“Oh, Gordon, no,” Beth said. “Surely Bledsoe doesn’t have that kind of clout.”

He shrugged. “Apparently he does. I could go back to the Bureau, but they were going to reassign me to an outpost in Alaska or something similar. I said, ‘No, thanks.’ I’ve become somewhat disillusioned with my job, anyhow. I’m not devastated to have walked.”

Astonished, Ethan shook his head. “I would think, given the revelations with Travis Tyler, Bledsoe would feel somewhat remorseful.”

“Not even close,” Gordon said. “I guess it made him look bad. He was counting on Chase hanging for Kiely’s murder as a political card. When that was taken away, all his self-righteous prognosticating about catching her killer fell flat. He can’t do anything to Chase directly, so he took aim at the nearest thing. Me.” He reached for the pitcher of tea and refilled his glass. “On the good news front, though, it looks like Travis is going to live. There wasn’t much evidence at his house, but they’re building a pretty strong case against him. With the DNA from all the cases across the Midwest, he’s going away for life. It’s just a formality at this point.”

“Wyatt said he’s paralyzed from the waist down,” Jason said. “Strong man like that, being incapacitated is going to be a kind of prison of its own. No more than he deserves, in my opinion.”

“I’m just thankful he didn’t die,” Annie said. “As much as he deserves to rot in hell, I’d hate to have been the one who sent him there.” Chase put his arm around her and pulled her close.

“So where does this leave you, Gordon?” he asked.

“I don’t know.” He stretched his arms over his head. “I’ve been working, in school, or in the service since I was eighteen. I only took the minimum time off when Mallory died. I think I’ll take a little while and just relax, figure out what to do next.”

“I didn’t know you were in the military,” Beth said. “When?”

Gordon smiled. “Back when I was a kid. It was the Army or jail. I chose the Army.”

“I never would have guessed it of you,” Ethan said, grinning. “All this time, I thought you were just a pretty-boy lawyer.”

Picking up his glass, Gordon saluted him with an answering grin. “You are looking at the one-time champion of boosting cars in Clay County, Kentucky.”

“See, I told you that you had more in common with him than you thought,” Beth told her husband, then looked back at Gordon. “Though I didn’t know you were quite that incorrigible.”