I could give you a hug.”
“Me, too.” But that kind of contact wasn’t allowed. “I love you, sis. Stay strong.”
As if she had any choice. She fought to keep her smile fixed in place. “I love you. I’ll keep writing. And it wouldn’t hurt you to pick up a pencil every now and then, either. Be safe.”
He nodded as he shuffled to the door in front of the guard. “You, too.”
Rosemary was alone for only a few seconds before another guard came to the door to walk her out to the visitors’ desk. But it was long enough for the smile to fade, her shoulders to sag and her heart to grow heavy. How was one woman supposed to endure so much and still keep going on with her life? She followed the rules. She’d done everything that was expected of her and more. Why wasn’t it good enough? Why wasn’t she good enough?
“Ma’am?”
With a quick swipe at the hot moisture in her eyes, Rosemary nodded and got up to accompany the guard out that door into an antechamber and then out the next one into the visitors’ waiting area. She jumped at the slam of each heavy door behind her, which closed her off farther from the only family she had left. With every slam, her shoulders straightened, her heart locked up and she braced herself to meet the concern that etched frown lines beside Howard Bratcher’s eyes when he greeted her. “How are you holding up?”
“I’m fine.”
While she waited in line to retrieve the purse she’d checked in at the front desk, Rosemary became aware of other eyes watching her. Not quite the lecherous leer she’d imagined tracking her from the shadows each night she got one of those creepy phone calls. Certainly not the solicitous concern in Howard’s hazel eyes.
When the holes boring into her back became too much to ignore, she turned.
“Rosemary?”
But she didn’t see Howard standing beside her. She looked beyond him to the rows of chairs near the far wall. The girlfriends, wives and mothers waiting to see their loved ones barely acknowledged her curiosity as her gaze swept down the line. There were a couple of men in T-shirts and jeans. A few more in dress slacks and polo shirts or wearing a jacket and tie like Howard. They were reading papers, chatting with their neighbors, using their phones.
But no one was watching.
No one was interested in her at all.
She was just a skittish, paranoid woman afraid of her own shadow these days.
Hating that any sense of self-confidence and security had once again been stolen from her, she turned back to the guard at the front desk and grabbed her purse. “Thank you.”
But when she fell into step beside Howard and headed toward the main doors, the hackles beneath her bun went on alert again. She was suddenly aware of the youngish man sitting at the end of the row against the wall. He wore a loose tie at the front of the linen jacket that remained curiously unwrinkled, and he was texting on his phone.
Was it that guy? Had he been following her movements with that more than casual curiosity she’d felt? Although it was hard to tell if he was making eye contact through the glasses he wore, he seemed to be holding his phone at an oddly upright angle, tapping the screen. He lifted his attention from his work and briefly smiled at her before returning to whatever he found so fascinating on the tiny screen.
Like an image of her?
“Rosemary?” She felt Howard’s touch at her elbow and quickly shifted her gaze back to the door he held open for her. “Is something wrong?”
“I don’t know.” Stepping outside, the wall of heat and humidity momentarily robbed her of breath. But her suspicion lingered. “Did you see that guy?”
“What guy?”
They were halfway across the parking lot now. “The one who was staring at me?”
Howard glanced over his shoulder and shrugged. “They probably don’t see a lot of pretty women here.”
Pretty? Rosemary groaned inwardly at the sly compliment. She caught a few frizzy waves that curled against her neck and tucked them into the bun at the back of her head. After Richard’s abuse, the last thing she wanted was to attract a man’s attention. But the curiosity of that man in the waiting room had felt like something different. She shuddered in the heat as she waited for Howard to open the door of his car for her. “I think he took a picture of me with his phone.”
“So you don’t mean one of the prisoners?”
“No. He was one of the attorney-looking guys out in the waiting area.”
“Attorney-looking?” Howard laughed as he closed the door behind her and walked around to his side of the car. He shed his suit jacket and tossed it into the backseat before getting in. “So we’re a type?”
“Sorry. I didn’t mean anything negative by that. I was just describing him. Suit. Tie. Maybe more on the ball than some of the others waiting to visit friends and family here. He looked like an educated professional.”
“No offense taken.” He pushed the button, and the engine of the luxury car hummed to life. “Could be a reporter, getting the scoop on Kansas City’s newest millionaire visiting the state penitentiary.”
Right, as if hearing her picture might be in the paper again was a whole lot better than thinking someone was spying on her. “I wish you wouldn’t say that.”
He pushed another button to turn on the air-conditioning. “What do you want me to call it? Your brother’s in the state pen. It’s public record.”
“No. ‘Kansas City’s newest millionaire.’” She supposed the soap opera of her life made her recent wealth big news in a summer where most of the local stories seemed to be about the weather. “I’d give anything if that headline had never hit the papers. I hate being the center of attention.”
“Yet you handle it all with grace and decorum.” Howard reached for her hand across the seat, but Rosemary pulled away before he made contact, busying herself with buckling up and adjusting the air-conditioning vents. Even as the evening hour approached, the temperature across Missouri was still in the nineties. Seeking relief from the heat was as legitimate an excuse to avoid his touch as her innate aversion to letting a man who looked so much like his late younger brother—or maybe any man, at all—get that close to her again.
With a sigh he made no effort to mask, Howard settled back behind the wheel and pulled out onto the road leading away from the prison. “Hungry for an early dinner? My treat. Jefferson City’s got this great new restaurant on top of one of the hotels downtown. You can see the Capitol Building and almost all the riverfront. Day or night, it’s a spectacular view.”
The answering rumble in her stomach negated the easy excuse to say she wasn’t hungry. Instead, she opted for an honest compromise. “Dinner would be great. But, could we just drive through and eat it in the car? I need to get home and let the dogs out. And we still have a two-and-a-half-hour drive to Kansas City ahead of us.”
Howard had seen the wrongful death and manufacturer’s negligence lawsuit his brother had started for her through to its conclusion. And though she’d trade the 9.2-million-dollar settlement for her parents in a heartbeat, she was
