stood by one of the windows, his back to her, making no effort to acknowledge her presence. Hands in the pockets of his jeans, his shoulders slumped, he gazed out at only he knew what.
Leah had been determined to stand up to him, to speak her mind about his earlier behavior and lay some ground rules. But the sight of him looking so…forlorn stole away the words she’d been prepared to say. Instead, she moved toward him quietly, wanting only to put her arms around him, to hold him close and assure him that everything would be all right.
Yes, his beloved Caro was dead, but he had Gracie to consider. And now she was there—his once and always friend—to help him begin to heal.
“Get out of here, Leah.”
Though pitched low, John’s voice lashed like a whip across the room, halting her in midstep. Momentarily stunned by the depth of his animosity toward her, Leah gripped the edge of his desk to steady herself. She saw in an instant how his shoulders had straightened, how he now held his hands at his sides, clenched into fists.
He was ready for a fight. More than that, he wanted one. But why? she wondered. She’d never been his enemy—
“Are you deaf, Leah? I told you to get out,” he repeated, this time honoring her with a pointed glance over one shoulder.
“John, please, I’ve come here to help,” she began, trying to get him to be reasonable.
“I don’t want or need your charity,” he muttered darkly, turning away again.
“I’m not sure what you mean by charity.” Truly puzzled by his comment, she eyed him silently, waiting for some further explanation. When he offered none, she ventured softly, “You obviously need some help around here and I’m more than willing to provide it. I thought you understood. More than that, I thought you agreed—”
“Me, agree? Not likely, Leah. And as for you being willing?” He laughed softly without any humor. “You’re only here because Cameron and Georgette played on your sympathy.”
“How can you say that?” she demanded, unable to hide her dismay. “Surely you know how much I care about you and Gracie.”
Her father and stepmother had played on her sympathy, but John had to know that that alone wouldn’t have brought her home again. Why, then, was he treating her like an adversary?
“Right, Leah. You care about us so much that you’ve only now come back to Missoula after eight years away. You didn’t even bother to come home for Caro’s funeral.” He paused for a moment, as if only then aware of what he’d revealed, then forged on with surly determination. “Now you want me to believe you’re here out of the goodness of your heart and you expect me to be grateful? No way in hell—”
“I was traveling in Southeast Asia when Caro died. I didn’t even know about the accident until two weeks after it happened,” Leah reminded him, realizing at last what had caused him to be so upset with her. She’d thought he knew and understood why she hadn’t been able to be there for him during those weeks immediately following Caro’s death. But it seemed he hadn’t, and he’d held it against her ever since. “I wrote to you then, John. A long letter you never answered. If you needed me, why didn’t you let me know? I would have come.”
“Because I didn’t need you then, just like I don’t need you now. Simple enough, isn’t it? So why don’t you grab your suitcase and just get the hell out of here,” he said again with a quiet emphasis that almost had her scurrying to obey.
Only the realization of how deeply he’d been hurt by her absence made her stand firm. Now that she knew how badly she’d let John down after Caro died, she wasn’t going to let him down again. There was Gracie to consider, too, and the awful disorder downstairs. Regardless of what he said or did, he needed her here, and here she was going to stay.
“I’ll get out of your study…for now. You’re obviously in the midst of a self-indulgent wallow of some sort, and I might as well leave you to it,” she stated with surprising self-possession. “But I’m not getting out of your house, not tonight or tomorrow or the day after that. Somebody needs to clean up the mess you’ve made downstairs before your daughter sees it. And somebody certainly needs to look after Gracie until Cameron and Georgette return in August. Since you seem too busy feeling sorry for yourself to even take out the trash, and since you’ve already succeeded in running off two nannies in the past nine months, you’re stuck with me. Like it or not, I suggest you get used to it,” she finished with a defiant tip of her chin.
“I didn’t run off two nannies in nine months,” he snapped back, glaring at her. “The first one left to take a higher-paying job in Seattle. I caught the second one in bed with a man in the middle of the day while Gracie was alone in her room under orders not to come out. Despite what you’ve obviously been told, I’m not quite the ogre I’ve been portrayed as being.”
“No one has portrayed you as an ogre, and I don’t consider you one, either. But by the same token, I’m not the enemy here,” she insisted, hoping to mollify him enough that he would give her at least a little cooperation.
“You did say you’d get out of my study, didn’t you?” he asked almost conversationally, obviously choosing to ignore her attempt to soften his mood. “Anytime now would be good for me.”
Both angered and exasperated by his callous dismissal but trying hard not to show it, Leah spun on her heel and crossed to the doorway, then paused.
“I never knew you could be such a jerk, John Bennett,” she tossed back at him, unable to keep the hurt she was feeling from echoing in her voice.
“There’s a lot you don’t know about me, Leah,” he warned softly, turning to face her fully for the first time since she’d entered his study. “A lot you don’t want to know, believe me.”
There was a new element in his tone, a self-loathing that caught Leah completely by surprise. But she was too caught up in her anger with him to do more than file the thought away for future consideration.
“Right now I’d have to agree with you,” she shot back.
Her head held high, Leah quietly left and closed the door behind her. She paused in the hallway to take a deep, calming breath, then suddenly realized that Gracie could have overheard their every word. With a sense of dread, she hurried down the hallway, then sighed with relief. A glance in the little girl’s bedroom assured her that Gracie was sleeping soundly.
While Leah had no intention of allowing John to treat her badly, she didn’t want his daughter witnessing the kind of exchange they’d just had. She didn’t think John would, either, but she couldn’t be absolutely sure. His emotions seemed much too volatile.
She could only hope that in the days ahead the diplomacy she’d developed dealing with the more overbearing parents she’d come up against as a teacher would work to her advantage with him, as well.
Obviously John was still grieving deeply for Caro. That alone gave her good reason to make allowances for his behavior. And although he hadn’t said as much in so many words, he’d also been hurt by her absence after Caro’s death.
Leah had thought about coming home many times in the months since the accident, but she’d always found excuses to stay away. Not because she hadn’t cared about John, she admitted. In fact, she’d cared about him too much and hadn’t wanted him to know it.
During
