Whatever Remains (41 page)

             
She felt a smile tugging. His mother – Shannon’s best friend since forever – was a Southern belle in the old tradition. Trauma required mass amounts of fatty foods as balm.

             
“The horses are out,” he said. “The stalls are terrible. Who knew: opening fire in the barn tends to have a negative effect on their bowels.”

             
A laugh turned into a groan in her throat. “Remy, I’m so sorry.”

             
“Sorry?” He crossed the room and pulled her into the gentlest of hugs. His sweater smelled like sweet hay. “For what?”

             
“For fighting with you. Don’t play dumb.”

             
He pulled back and held her upper arms, face an odd blend of alarmed and amused. “Don’t you act like us arguing was the most disturbing thing that happened yesterday. Arguing happens, especially when you’ve been married as long as we have.” He touched the end of her nose with a finger and went back to his ham.

             
He was brave-facing it for her benefit, and she knew it. She was still too rattled for that herself. “You need any help? You want me to make toast or something?”

             
“I want you to sit and do nothing. No offense, sweetie, but you look half-dead.”

             
“I feel it,” she assured with a sigh, finding her way to a chair at the table. Keely walked over and thrust her sleek red and white head into Jade’s hand. Warm dog breath against her wrist, the hiss of the skillet, the smell of breakfast, the familiar glimmer of the kitchen: it was hard to believe what had happened the night before, but when she blinked, she saw Grace – sprawled and bleeding – tattooed against the backs of her eyelids. It wasn’t a delicate image, so she wasn’t going to talk about it delicately. “I’ve got to clean the blood up off the floor down there.”

             
He paused, shoulders stiffening, but resumed turning ham triangles. “The police have people that do that sort of thing. Crime scene cleanup.”

             
“I’m not waiting for them to get around to it. Is the pressure washer still in the tractor shed?”

             
“Get Ben to call in a favor,” he suggested. “You don’t need to be lugging the pressure washer around.”

             
“It’s on wheels.”

             
“Well, I don’t want…” He trailed off with a heavy sigh and turned to face her again. “I’m doing it again, aren’t I?”

             
She bit her lip and said nothing.

             
“Damn it, Jade, I can’t
not
do it, okay? I’m a busybody and I treat you like your mother would, and you know what?” He made a defeated gesture with his spatula. “I can’t help it.” He looked at her and his face softened, eyes warm and chocolate and worried. “You know I love you. So much. You and Clara both.”

             
“Remy – ”

             
“But I think maybe you’re right about us leaning too hard on each other. I think maybe…living together isn’t the best arrangement going forward.”

             
Her eyes stung and she thought she’d draw blood the way she pulled her lip between her teeth. “I’ll do whatever you want,” she said. “But I’m not saying you need to move out. I’m not saying that
at all
.”

             
His smile was wistful. “This week’s been shit. Worse than shit. I haven’t slept; I’ve had nightmares – shit, what kind of pussy am I – about a goddamn soccer mom, for God’s sakes.” He rolled his eyes. “And I wasn’t the only one.” He gestured toward her.

             
“What?”

             
“Ben’s bag. Side zipper pocket.”

             
It was at the far end of the table and she tried to drag it toward her, winced, and walked to it instead.

             
“I was running a load of wash,” Jeremy said as she unzipped it. “And thought I’d be the bigger man and do him a favor. I didn’t want some skank old boxers smelling up my kitchen or anything. And, anyway” – she found a little wooden box beside his shampoo bottle – “I found
that
.”

             
Jade cracked the lid and nearly dropped the thing. “No,” she said to herself. She glanced up at Jeremy. “No way.”

             
He shrugged. “Who knows when he’s going to spring it on you. Probably never. He’s probably going to chicken…”

             
But she was already heading back toward the stairs and up to her bedroom. Ben was on his stomach now, his head under the pillow. She leaned over and gave his shoulder a hard shove.

             
He made a growling noise that was muffled by the pillow and said something that sounded like, “What?”

             
“Wake up.”

             
He braced up on his forearms, pillow falling to the side. “Why? Is something on fire?”

             
“I found the ring,” she said, and he snapped to immediate attention, launching himself upright, eyes fighting sleep as they locked onto her face. He frowned. He looked no better rested than Jeremy, but decidedly more panicked.

             
“You did
what
?”

             
She opened the lid and showed it to him, the diamond solitaire on the simple gold band. It was round, and its many many facets caught even the weak rays of light coming through the curtains, setting it on fire. “That’s an engagement ring,” she said, daring him to argue otherwise. “I may be romantically challenged, but I know what it is.”

             
He fisted his eyes and raked his hands through his hair, standing it on end. Silver strands along his temples flared bright in the sunlight. The look he tipped up to her was one part guilty, two parts scared kid, and it smoothed across her heart, left her smiling.

             
“Were you saving it for your other girlfriend?” she asked. “Or pawning it to fix your radio?”

             
“I – Jesus. Alright.” He threw the covers off. “Now that you know…” He took a huge breath and let it out in a rush. She’d never seen him like this, lacking any kind of composure. “It’s my grandmother’s,” he said. “She didn’t have any daughters, or granddaughters, so she left it for me to…you know…when she died. Dad tried to give it to Chris when he proposed to Jess, but he wouldn’t take it.” A non-smile tweaked his features; he forced a tight laugh. “He said you’d earned it, whether I ever gave it to you or not.”

             
She needed to sit down. She made it to the hope chest at the end of the bed before her legs gave out. “You – ” She wet her lips. “You just said a week ago that it wouldn’t make sense for us to…” She didn’t dare say the words. “A week ago, Ben.”

             
He’d finally pulled himself together; he met her stare unblinking. “Nothing changed in a week.”

             
“Well
something
did.”

             
He took a breath.
I love you
, she wanted him to say.
I’ve always loved you and I can’t live without you anymore.
But that wasn’t Ben, and in their own way, his words were somehow sweeter. Mindless emotion was romantic; love that came back from the beating they’d given it: that was the stuff of legend. “I’ve never – not in my life – done anything to risk my job.” His expression went pensive. “Not because I wouldn’t – I don’t think – but because I never had a conflict of interest. The night I got the call about Heidi.” He shook his head. “I didn’t even hesitate. Not for a second. I lied to my captain, I coerced my partner into covering it up for me, and I put the whole investigation at risk. I haven’t ever been as sure of anything as I was about needing to be with you and Clara that night.” He tipped his head. “And all these nights since.”

             
“You know, I could take that the wrong way: at five-years-old, your daughter is suddenly something you ‘need.’” She said it softly, though, and his eyes warmed.

             
“What would you have done,” he asked, “if I’d proposed the night you told me you were pregnant?”

             
“I don’t know.”

             
“Yeah you do.”

             
She twitched a half-smile. “I would have thought you’d asked me for the baby’s sake. For Clara.”

             
“For all the reasons everyone in that situation gets married.”

             
She nodded.

             
“I had to know, Jade. Maybe that’s stupid – ”

             
“Oh, it’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

             
“ – but I had to. I had to know I couldn’t let go.”

             
He had such a stern face, a face that might have been handsome, based on its component parts. But his nose was too sharp and his brows slanted too low over his eyes and most of the time, he just looked mean. Hard. Not in the way that women found sexy on those chiseled underwear models, but stern. Unfriendly. She loved that face, though, because it was his, and because it was the image she pulled to the forefront of her mind whenever she was frightened, or fretful, or just needed a good attack of mad to pull herself up by the bootstraps.

             
“And now you know?” she asked.

             
“I always knew. I just had to make sure.”

             
A beat passed. She lifted the ring box. “I should shove this down your throat.”

             
“You’re entitled.” He smiled.  “But then you wouldn’t get to wear it.”

             
With shaking hands, she plucked it from its box and slid it on her finger. The diamond winked up at her, almost conspiratorial.
See? He just needed a good kick in the ass. He was always going to come around.

             
She lifted her eyes to the fathomless depths of his brown ones. “I’ve always loved you,” she said, voice a choked whisper. “Always.” Her lips twitched. “Even when I wanted to strangle you.”

             
“Me too,” he said, and tears pricked her eyes. His smile was thin and boyish and embarrassed. “It seemed so impossible, what with everything…but it was true. It was true the whole time.” His voice dropped, deepened, a tremor of emotion stealing through it. “I dunno what I’d ever do if…if something happened to the two of you.”

             
As quickly as she could, ribs grabbing, Jade climbed over the end of the bed on her knees and settled in his lap, arms going tight around his neck. She pressed her face into his hair – it smelled like her shampoo. And she held him, his heart thumping against hers, while the last vestiges of panic and pain bled out of them, leaving them totally alone together. The first time since the night she’d conceived Clara.

28

“
I
t looks good there.”

             
“It makes my hand feel heavy,” Jade admitted. She lifted her hand to the light over the table and made a face. “I whacked it on the lid of my tack trunk this morning and I thought for a second I’d knocked the stone loose.”

             
Across the table, Jess’s sister-in-law, Delta – a brunette stunner much too far out of most men’s price ranges – was taking notes in a tidy day planner. She was an event coordinator – according to Jess, she was fast becoming
The
event coordinator in the metro area – and was taking notes about the wedding that still had Jade’s head spinning. Her lips – tasteful nude lipstick and wickedly shaped – curved. “You’d rather not have a ring?”

             
Jess snorted. “I think it’s more a case of shock.”

             
Jade spread her hand flat across the table, the diamond catching the light. “No shit.”

             
The back door opened with a click and Ben entered, wind swirling his hair. His eyes swept them as he closed the door and Jade smiled to herself to see the momentary panic skitter across his face. Three women lying in wait, and Jade knew her own temper paled in comparison to the other two. He composed himself, though, expression blanking over, becoming impassive. “Ladies.”

             
“The groom?” Delta asked.

             
“None other,” Jess said.

             
Delta’s eyes cut across the table to Jade and she fired off another tiny grin. “Kudos.” She pushed back her chair. “Okay, then. Jade, I’ll call you to confirm after I’ve talked to my flower people.”

             
Jess stood too. “Don’t worry.” Her hand landed on Jade’s shoulder and squeezed. “We’ll keep it small.”

             
Jade forced a smile. “I’m holding you to that.”

             
Ben pretended he had business in the fridge while Delta and Jess exited, Delta’s stilettos rapping sharply on the tile. When they were gone, he turned around and gave her a flat look. “She has an evil twin now?”

             
“You know Delta. Mike’s wife.” When he didn’t react, she sighed. “You’re the least observant detective in the world, you know that?”

             
“I’ve got important stuff to keep track of; you can look after…” He gestured to the door. “
Them
.”

             
She smiled. For someone who’d fought it for years, in two weeks, he’d slipped into the role of put-upon husband with the unpracticed ease of a skinchanger. “Neither of our mothers are going to allow us to get by without a wedding,” she said as he joined her at the table with half a bottle of Snapple and shrugged out of his sport coat.

             
“I was afraid of that.”

             
“We’re having it at Rosewood. Delta and Jess are handling all the arrangements. So it’s looking like we’re walking down the aisle,” she said with a sympathetic non-smile. He shrugged. “How was your first day back?”

             
Another shrug, but she saw a flicker of excitement move through him. He liked his job, he really did.

             
“I bet Trey was glad to have you with him again.”

             
“Yeah.” That got an almost-smile out of him.

             
Small, pattering footsteps on the stairs signaled Clara; she rounded the corner with a hand against the wall and streaked into the kitchen. “Daddy! You’re home!”

             
“I am.” He pushed back his chair and caught her as she launched into his lap. “How are you?”

             
His fulltime, routine presence had a beautiful effect on Clara.
Go easy, baby,
Jade thought.
Let’s wait and see if he means it…

             
But he was so solid now, such firm, stable stuff, arms around her at night, wide chest pressed to her back. He hadn’t changed – men didn’t do that – but he was trying, and he’d never done that before. Loving wasn’t hard for him, it was the everyday living that got under his skin. He would learn, she had a feeling, that those two things weren’t mutually exclusive.

             
She turned up the heat on the crock pot – their roast for dinner – gave it a stir, and stepped into her boots, leaving father and daughter to chat about ponies and princesses while she went in search of Jeremy.

             
It was an amber evening, the shadows long on the grass, insects swirling in great swarms in golden baths of light. The breeze brought the smell of the barn – dust, hay, horses – rushing up to her as she traversed the drive and entered through the front doors. The horses were in, happily munching, right where she’d left them all only a half hour before. All but Rosie. Through the shadowed aisle, across the grass, in the arena, she saw Rosie dancing with her owner: a perfect canter pirouette.

             
She shoved her hands in her pockets and walked down to the rail, propped a booted foot against the bottom board. Jeremy coaxed the mare into a graceful outward spiral, headed across the diagonal line, and executed a near-perfect series of tempi changes. They could have been a statue come to life, gilded and resplendent. Watching them, everything in the world made sense, every little painful thing.

             
Rosie snapped to a square halt on the centerline and Jeremy patted her neck, reins sliding out through his fingers. She was sweating, steam ghosting off her slick hide as Jeremy turned her toward Jade at a loose, ground-covering walk.

             
“Dinner’ll be ready in about twenty minutes,” Jade said as the pair drew up in front of her. She stroked Rosie’s velvet nose. “But I can hold it a little longer if you’re not ready.”

             
He should have ridden with a helmet, but he never did. His hair stood up on the top of his head, blasted by the wind, and his eyes were bright. “No, go ahead. We’re done.”

             
Done
hit her like a punch, right in the stomach. Her smile froze the same moment his did. She felt all the sparkle get sucked out of the evening. “What time do you leave tomorrow?” she asked, voice a sad collection of hollow notes.

             
“About this time, I figure,” he said, casting a glance around the sun-drenched arena. The sky was going gray and purple-edged. The birds were talkative. “That way I can feed her dinner there and let her get settled in for the night; she’ll be sleepy.”

             
Jade nodded, swallowing the sudden lump in her throat. Just a week before, he’d accepted an offer from Michelle Hawke, training and riding for her at her Alpharetta farm, traveling to Florida with her for the winter show season and working her Palm Beach string. It was the opportunity of a lifetime. He couldn’t pass it up. She was more than capable of running Canterbury, especially once she hired a working student or two of her own. But that didn’t make the leaving any less painful. It didn’t ease the sense of having her better half scraped away with a sharp knife.

             
Jeremy threw his leg over Rosie and landed lightly on his feet in the sand. He pulled the reins over her head and held them looped over his arm, bracing his elbows on top of the rail. “I hope we’re sure about this,” he said with a wry smile. “Both of us.”

             
Her own smile was somber, she could feel it. “We are. We’re just scared.”

             
“With good reason.”

             
She turned and put her back to the fence, so she and Jeremy were shoulder-to-shoulder, just the boards between them. Where they stood, they had a clear view of the edge of the property, the fence that bordered it, a swatch of woods, and, just visible, a wedge of brown siding that was the Latham house next door.

             
A dread like cold water slid down her back, gooseflesh erupting in its wake. She couldn’t forget, because that house wouldn’t let her. When she drove past it, when she caught a glimpse of it through the trees, Alicia Latham reached through time and distance and laid a crippling hold on the rational parts of her mind. The monster at the end of the story hadn’t looked a thing like what she’d always been taught to expect. Now, the world was an even scarier place, one in which she couldn’t read evil, but could only react to it.

             
Jeremy seemed to read her thoughts. “I heard there’s a new family moving in. Renters.”

             
She shivered. “Do they have kids?”

             
“I think so.”

             
She took a breath. “I don’t ever want to meet them.”

             
A beat passed. Rosie nuzzled at Jade’s elbow. “Did Ben ever find out what happened the day you fell?” Jeremy asked, a note of fear creeping into his voice. “Who was in the woods?”

             
She shivered. “No. It could have been Alicia – we know she was spying on me. There were binoculars hidden in her nightstand drawer, the lab guys said. Or” – the breeze lifted her hair – “it could have been anyone. Or no one at all. Just my imagination.”

She loved the sound of his lungs expanding. With her ear pressed over his chest, she heard the air rush in and fill them up, ribcage swelling, lifting beneath her face; and then they emptied with a great sighing sound. Her ribs weren’t healed completely, but they
were better, and she and Ben could do slow, gentle things. Easy. Unhurried. About-to-be-married things. His skin was damp with sweat, and his heart thumped steadily against her temple. She sighed, stretched, and enjoyed the fit of their bodies together, the afterglow. The dark around them – all the safe dark of her room with him in it.

             
When she’d caught her breath, she said, “Are you okay with the wedding?”

             
His legs moved under the sheet with a rustle. “What?” His voice was groggy: he’d been half asleep already.

             
“The wedding.” She pushed herself up so her head was on his collarbone. “I know we’re being pressured into it, but if you don’t want to – ”

             
“The wedding’s fine.”

             
“Don’t just say that for my benefit.”

             
His big hand curled around her upper arm and he eased her over onto her side, propped up on an elbow so they were facing one another, eyes glowing in the dark. “So what if it is for your benefit. Is that a bad thing?”

             
“Well…” She searched what little she could see of his face in the shadows. “Isn’t it?”

             
His hand slid up her arm, over her shoulder, around the sharp line of her clavicle and settled over her heart. “You shot someone,” he said, voice taking on a tender edge she hadn’t heard before. “A perfect, textbook shoulder shot, with a gun that wouldn’t get me in trouble.” She swore she could
feel
him smiling. “You kept that little girl alive. You took care of shit, to protect my job. Wasn’t that for my benefit?”

             
“Yes.”

             
“Sweetheart, it doesn’t matter if I hate the thought of a string quartet and rose petals. I owe you the better part of six years, so stop worrying about me. You’ve gotta show me how to make it up to you.”

             
She blinked, eyes stinging. “That’s really cheesy, babe.”

             
“I know.”

             
“But it’s sweet.” She leaned toward him through the shadows until she found his mouth and settled her lips against his, the kiss fast and fierce. “I love you,” she said, and when he kissed her, she knew he was saying it back to her.

It was six months later that Dan Griggs came into the precinct. On a heavy summer afternoon, the squad room a ghost town as Trey and Ben sorted through backlogged paperwork on a junkie stabbing case, the receptionist buzzed them and said that there was a man up front wanting to see the detectives who’d “rescued his little girl.” Ben told Wanda to send him back.

              He looked to be late forties, leather-skinned and sunburned with a solid, square face, an implacable nose under hard blue eyes. A solid, strong, working man. His short-sleeved shirt was pressed, and clean, though frayed along the hem. His jeans looked new. His baseball cap he held in his hands and rubbed at the bill nervously as Trey stood up and shook his hand.

             
“Daniel Griggs,” he said. “You’re Detective Kaiden I spoke to on the phone?”

             
“Yes, sir.” The kid looked older, harder around the edges and more professional these days. “And my partner, Ben Haley.”