forced himself to suck it up. To repeat his mantra. Two weeks. Two weeks. Two weeks.
* * *
Angelica surveyed the kitchen with satisfaction. The early-morning light poured through the windows. Jefferson had eaten his steak dinner and gobbled up the cookies she had made yesterday.
She looked for his note, read it and smiled. He’d failed penmanship? Really, it was hard to imagine him failing anything. She put that note with the others, aware she was collecting them.
She went over to the grinder, and put in coffee beans. In a few minutes fresh coffee was dripping into the pot. She savored the smell of it and the light and the birdsong—and Jefferson’s note. She felt so supremely rested. She felt alive and happy.
The phone rang, as she poured herself that first cup of coffee, and she felt herself tensing. Jefferson’s house phone rarely rang. For too long, the phone ringing in her life had meant the sound of breathing on the other end. Or a hang-up. Or a sobbing explanation. Or a begging plea.
She reminded herself she was fearless now and, coffee in one hand, she picked up the phone without checking the call display.
“Stone House,” she said cheerfully.
A moment later the cup, filled with coffee fell from her hand and shattered on the floor. She stared at the mess, put the phone receiver back in its cradle. She wondered, dazedly, if proclaiming herself fearless had been like a challenge to the gods.
Jefferson appeared at the kitchen door. “I heard a crash.” He took in the smashed coffee cup. “Thank God,” he said. “I thought you’d finally managed to fall off a ladder.”
She shook her head mutely.
He crossed the room in a single stride and gazed down at her.
“What is it?”
“The police just called,” she managed to croak. “The Calgary police. I took your advice and called them after...”
That magical night shimmered, momentarily, between them, like a mirage.
And that’s what it was, she told herself. A mirage. Real life was different. “Angie?” He took her shoulders and gave her a gentle shake. She looked up into his eyes, and tried to feel the sense of safety she had felt that night, and really ever since. But maybe that had been part of the mirage, feeling safe in an unsafe world.
“Tell me what’s happened,” he ordered her.
“You know that girl Winston told me he had been dating? The one who supposedly dumped him at the same time Harry dumped me?”
He cocked his head at her, frowning, still holding her shoulders, thank God, anchoring her to his kitchen and him and not allowing her to fly toward her fear.
“She’s missing. The police suspect foul play. And they suspect Winston is connected to it, and no, they have not located him yet.”
He said a word under his breath that should have appalled her. Instead, for a reason she couldn’t decipher immediately, it made her feel reassured, but still she trembled. She could feel panic quaking within her, just below the surface.
“I feel I need to do something,” she said. “But I don’t know what it is. Scream? Cry? Lock myself in the bathroom? Run away?”
“You aren’t doing any of that.” He pulled her in close to him and held her tight.
In the circle of Jefferson’s arms, she could feel the trembling begin to subside. “I’m not?” she whispered.
“You aren’t going to scream, or cry. You aren’t going to lock yourself in the bathroom, and you most certainly are not going to run away.”
She sighed against him. She wasn’t so sure she wasn’t going to cry. “I—I—I guess you’re stuck with me for a little while longer, then.”
He put her away from him, at arm’s length.
“Well,” he said, all business, “let’s make the most of it, shall we? Did you want to move furniture today?”
She stared at him, stunned by his sudden change in demeanor. “What?”
“Look, I’m not letting you move it by yourself. The last thing I need is a Workers’ Compensation claim. And I happen to have a clear day as far as my schedule goes.”
Her mouth worked soundlessly. Suddenly, she knew exactly what he was doing. Somehow he knew if he left her alone or even let her make her own decisions, they would all be bad ones. He could probably tell she was a hair away from dissolving into hysterics. Somehow he knew he had to get her focused on something else.
“You should have something to eat. I can recommend the chocolate chip cookies,” he said it as if it was an ordinary day.
“Chocolate chip cookies are not breakfast!”
A tiny smile played along his lips, satisfied. He had managed to distract her, and he was pleased about it.
“I had them. I seem to be okay,” he said. He held one out to her, wafted it underneath her nose.
She grabbed it from him and took a bite. Surprisingly, it felt as if it might not be such a bad breakfast, after all. She gobbled down three of them. Surprisingly, it felt as if the knots of anxiety in her stomach were eased. By the cookies, or by him, she couldn’t quite be certain.
While she ate cookies, he went and surveyed the living room.
“I have a plan,” Jefferson announced. “I have a furniture dolly out in the shed. I think it might work better than the dishrag system you outlined.”
She was ashamed of it, but she could not even let him out of her sight when he went to get the dolly.
“You might as well come with me,” he said, as if it was his idea, as if she was not already stuck to his heels like glue. “There are other things we might need from the shed.”
She followed him outside into the morning. She stopped for a minute, gulping in the freshness, the call of the birds, the chatter of an indignant chipmunk.
At the shed door, he stopped and looked back at her.
“Something else?” he said quietly. “He’s not coming for you here. And if he did, he’d have to get past me. And you know what?”
She shook her head.
“He’s no match for me.”
And she knew, looking up at him, that that was absolutely true. She knew why she had been reassured instead of appalled by that dreadful word he had said.
Because in that single syllable had been this message.
Jefferson Stone would lay down his life for her. And though Angie had lost the lovely sensation of fearless that she had felt over the past few days, something in her relaxed as she watched him fling open the shed door.
“There it is.”
She
