CHAPTER THREE
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The blow knocked him back against the sawhorse, which was no support; the boards and the saw went flying and he landed on his ass in surprise, pain and a flurry of leaves and dust.
Juliet stalked past him and into the cabin while Carlton tried to right himself, scrambling for his cane. His leg stabbed at him as he made it to his feet, and he lurched up the porch steps after her.
His jaw hurt like hell already; she packed as powerful a punch as any perp who'd ever hit him, and with that kind of fury fueling it, he couldn't be sure she wasn't waiting just inside to wallop him again.
But the cabin's interior was quiet, except for a sound from the kitchen—the clinking, thunking of ice.
He stopped to evaluate: there had been no car outside. He had no sense anyone was with her. She came on foot? She was in jeans, a loose tee. No weapon—so far as he knew—and no handbag. Just Juliet.
His beloved Juliet.
Move on now.
She was at the kitchen table, staring at her hand, around which she'd wrapped one of his dish towels. A half-empty ice tray was in front of her. She looked up at him, her cheeks streaked with tears, and was—as she had always been—the loveliest creature he'd ever known.
Carlton drank in the sight of her, and she raked him over with those misty blue eyes.
Then she was on her feet again, coming at him. She went lower this time, straight for his gut, and he wasn't ready—later he blamed it on having been mesmerized by the intensity of her deep blue gaze.
The force of the blow actually shoved him against the counter, gasping in surprise, and if she had been anyone else on the planet he'd have lashed back—as soon as his stomach quit roiling.
I am definitely too old for this.
"My therapist," she said tightly, "told me there's no wrong way to process grief. She said the important thing is to express it when I feel it."
She went back to the table and picked up her impromptu ice-pack towel, again wrapping it around her knuckles.
Carlton straightened up slowly and retrieved his cane once more, taking a wide path to the opposite end of the table. Maybe if he sat down he would be less likely to get knocked down.
"Juliet," he started, and just like that she was crying.
"Shut up," she managed. "Just shut up. I'm not ready for you to talk." Rising, she plucked a few paper towels off the roll by the sink and used them to wipe her face after she reclaimed her seat. "Stupid men. Never have tissues. What's wrong with you," she muttered. "Like it would kill you to buy a damn box of Kleenex."
He'd never thought to keep a box in the kitchen before, but he would now.
It wasn't so bad, keeping quiet—he knew he'd have to talk a lot soon enough—because he could keep looking at her.
I thought I'd never see you again, except in dreams. And those dreams… damn, they have nothing on the real thing. The real you.
As if she had tuned in to this wavelength, Juliet suddenly looked directly at him. She was silent, and he kept still under the scrutiny—for fear his slightest movement might cause her to bolt.
What did she see?
He'd only had a full beard once while they were partners, and had kept his hair pretty short, so he knew this was a different look. He was used to it now, and it had been necessary in those first years to be certain no one would notice any similarities between John Ellery and the man who'd supposedly been obliterated in an explosion.
She whispered, "Tell me why I've had to live without you the last five years. And please understand I'm almost certainly going to hit you again. Probably more than once. Okay?"
More than fair. She'd have to share the ice, though, and if she hit him in the groin as hard as she'd hit him so far in the face and stomach, he sure wouldn't be talking much right after. Or maybe ever.
"Almost nobody got out of that building. How did you? Why did you?"
"I didn't know I did. I didn't wake up until two weeks later." His jaw ached but he didn't dare reach for the ice tray.
Her eyes glittered. "Who got you out? I was there that day. You think I wasn't checking every single gurney?"
"You weren't there first," he said heavily. "I got caught up in a federal operation. They pulled the wrong guy and didn't figure it out until it was too late."
Expressionless was the wrong word for how she looked just then.
Something between incredulous and murderous might do.
And she wasn't there first; she was in a dentist's chair across town. By the time she could have arrived, from what he remembered of Donovan's rundown of events, a good half-hour had passed. If Donovan's people hadn't been onsite themselves and ready to move in for their own operation, then yeah, she was right: it would have been impossible for anyone to be removed without being counted, if nothing else.
Juliet said slowly, and icily, "They. Pulled. The wrong guy?"
Carlton felt sick.
"They tore my heart out of my chest over the wrong damned guy?"
She was on her feet, wild-eyed.
There was nothing he could say.
It wasn't his doing. It wasn't his choice.
Juliet stood, chest heaving, her hands to her face, silently sobbing, but there was such raw fury in it—he felt it from where he sat.
He wished he could soothe her but knew instinctively that if he so much as brushed one fingertip against the very edge of her sleeve, she would burst into a roaring inferno and take him with her.
She almost staggered to the sink and ran cold water to splash against her skin, blotting it with more paper towels, and then filled a glass to bring back to the table, her hand visibly shaking.
It crossed his mind to wonder if he'd soon be wearing that water, along with cuts from the broken glass.
But she remained silent, her breathing gradually returning to normal, and the glass was half empty before she found her voice again.
"Okay, John Ellery. Tell your story. And don't you leave out one damned word."
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Juliet listened as Carlton talked.
Occasionally she told him to stop—and he would without hesitation—because the enormity of it all would overwhelm her.
Not just that he was alive and had been alive this whole time.
Not just the realization that he'd been taken from her because of a mistake.
Not just that the sound of his smoky voice was so blessedly wonderful—she'd missed it as much as the rest of him.
Not just that—by the way he was looking at her—he'd deeply missed her as well.
But also because he was beautiful. Imperfect and scarred and beautiful. He stood once to pull up his shirt and show her shrapnel scars on his torso and back from the building explosion, and her heart contracted in on itself and she wanted to touch him so badly.
She also wanted to kick him and punch him and lay him flat out. And this Donovan person—oh he was next on her list.
No, he was first on her list.
He'd saved her partner but he'd destroyed her.
Maybe you should cut him some slack. If he hadn't saved Carlton by mistake, you wouldn't be here with him now.
Shut up, she told that voice ruthlessly.
Carlton was waiting for her to tell him to continue.
Well, he could keep waiting. She'd been waiting five damn years.
After she left the resale shop earlier in the week, she looked up his address and scoped out the cabin. Her plan was simple: she was going to come here today and pound on his front door. No subtlety, no finesse. Just show up and demand answers.
But he made it easier by having his back to her, by using the electric saw. She parked her Jeep up the road a bit, and walked quietly and unhurriedly toward the cabin, keeping her eye on him while he focused on his work. When he turned the saw off, she was already within five feet of his all-too-familiar lean frame. Another few steps and she could have reached out to touch that wavy silver and black hair.
When she spoke to him—and when he said her name; when she heard that voice say her name for the first time in five long years—her heart broke and healed and broke all over again.
Because that's when she knew it really was all true.
"Your leg was hurt in the explosion?" she asked him now, gesturing to his cane.
"No. I mean, yes, but the cane came later. I got shot a year ago."
A wave of nausea overtook her, and she put an ice cube directly to her forehead, holding up her hand to stop him from saying more.
How many lives do you have? she wondered. I nearly lost you in the woods. I thought I did lose you five years ago. Now I find I could have lost you to a gunshot serious enough to leave you with a permanent and significant limp.
"What happened?" she finally prompted, once she was sure her voice wouldn't betray her.
Carlton shook his head slightly, as if bemused. "A mistake. The—"
"They make a lot of mistakes," she interrupted tartly, "these people you work for."
His tone was wry. "This one wasn't theirs. The target of the investigation was aiming for one of his own, someone he thought betrayed him. That guy dodged the bullet. The next bullet took out our lead. The bullet after that took out my leg."
Juliet felt the wave of nausea again. He'd lost a co-worker. "Were you partners, you and the lead?"
He met her gaze evenly. "We worked together sometimes. It was a loss. But the only real partner I ever had was you."
She held it together for no more than four seconds before the tears came again, and she covered her face with her hands, lost to the emotion, drowning in the grief and sorrow and confusion of having everything upended. She wanted—needed—to touch him. She needed to feel his solid thereness. But she couldn't think or see or recover from this onslaught of pain.
And then his hand settled on her shoulder gently, and his warm voice spoke her name, and Juliet wept as he drew her up and into his arms.
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Her arms snaked around him and her face pressed to his chest, and his heart may have stopped entirely when she sobbed out his name. The name he hadn't heard in so very long—a name he'd never really liked—and which only ever sounded right coming from her.
Releasing his grip on the cane, he enclosed her, and they clung together. She felt so damn good—so soft, so warm... so perfect. So perfectly Juliet.
He couldn't have sat there one more moment watching her without offering comfort. He knew it was a risk; she might lash out again and he'd have to take another hit.
But not holding her—not trying—wasn't an option.
Juliet's grip on him was fierce, but so was his grip on her. He thought he could stay like that forever, taking in her heat and scent, as long as he could somehow make her hurt less.
"Carlton," she whispered again. "I don't... I don't even..."
He stroked her hair, allowing his fingers to twine in the soft curls. She wore it shoulder-length now, but it was the same honey gold color he'd loved. She was the same woman he'd loved.
Still loved.
"I don't know to make sense of any of this," she said against his chest, but her tone was calmer and her breathing was steadier and she didn't seem as if she were about to pull back and punch him again.
He relaxed his hold, wishing he could kiss her, even if it was just her cheek or her forehead.
Juliet looked up at him, searching for some sign, but all he could do was allow the search. None of his answers would make any of this right. Sighing, she slipped out of his grasp and sat down again. "Make me some tea, please, and explain how you ended up here."
Carlton obeyed, rinsing the kettle as he began a brief summation of his years working for Donovan.
In most of his fieldwork, he wasn't the lead, and fieldwork comprised less than two-thirds of his time. They were happy with his profiling, which suited him. For all that he'd enjoyed the 'street' aspect of running the squad at the SBPD, and had griped about the paperwork, the only paperwork he truly hated was the routine, red-tape variety.
Fill out Form A-17B before filing C2-37J. Do not staple. Use green ink. No, not that green. The other green. Failure to submit in triplicate will void K-78 Form 23 and cause your head to explode. Do not taunt Form F13Q66-Z or it will call your mother... at three a.m.
Studying files and information to get to the heart of the criminal or his operation—that was endlessly fascinating. That kind of paperwork—or more accurately these days, screenwork—never got old.
He even had a secret liking for treks to old Records Rooms, where he could get his hands on actual paper and photos and realia.
She was smiling faintly—a lovely sight—but then it faded. Her hands curled around the tea mug he'd given her, and she gazed into the cup. "No relationships along the way?"
Carlton was surprised by her tone as well as the question. "No time," he said first. "No inclination."
Nobody was you.
Juliet's shoulders seemed to relax, and he felt a momentary lightness in his heart—odd, that—but then she said very quietly, "You could have contacted me. In all this time. Why didn't you?"
It was a terrible and grossly unfair question to ask, and he felt his grip on his own mug tighten briefly. "You know I couldn't."
She looked up at him, her expression mutinous. "I don't know that. Just a word, Carlton. A word. A sign. A clue you were..." Her breath hitched, and she fell silent.
Like a word would have been enough. Like a clue wouldn't have caused an avalanche of questions and just as much heartache and anger as she clearly felt right now.
"Juliet." He sighed. "I asked about you once, early on, so I knew you'd left Santa Barbara. I chose to believe you were happy wherever you were and whatever you were doing, but there wasn't any way for me to find out."
Her frown grew more fierce. "You were a damned Federal agent. You could have—"
"Stop. You're angry and I understand. But everything about you and everyone else in my old life was flagged. Donovan made it very clear that any system searches relating to my past would send alerts straight to him. They had to protect their investment in me by making sure I didn't jack it up by being sentimental."
The frown held but he could tell she knew he was being honest.
"And you didn't help," he added, "because the one time I got a break during a case I was working in Illinois, I tried to look you up on a public library Internet computer, but you didn't have any social media accounts I could find."
Truthfully, he'd just longed to see her face again, and he'd been afraid not finding her meant she'd gotten married.
She might be married now. She might be married to Spencer.
He had to focus. "For what it's worth, there isn't anyone else I'd have taken that risk for."
She brushed a tear away and nodded, as if that's all she'd wanted to hear.
Yet in the next second—eyes misty but dangerously so—she said, "No. No. You know what? That's not good enough."
He frowned.
Juliet pushed on, "I mean, I understand, Carlton, and I believe you, but... you were alive!" Her voice rose. "And you were out here—out here living—and I was out there dying a little more every day and it's not—it's damn well not good enough that you were afraid of losing your stupid job!"
"It wasn't about my job," he snapped back. "You know it's more complicated than that."
"Complicated! Complicated?" The bitterness cut through him as sharply as if she'd struck him again. "Complicated is when you get a call that your partner was just killed! That he was blown to pieces and you don't even have a body to bury! Complicated is when you saw him in the morning and he promised you lunch and then all you ever have of him after that is a broken piece of a badge and—"
She was crying, furious and wounded, and his peripheral vision advised him she also was about to hurl the ceramic mug at him, and while he was willing to be yelled at, he did not intend to take a concussion today. He reached over and yanked it out of her hand, sloshing the warm tea over both of them, and she cursed and stood up and he met her halfway and before she could haul off and thump him again he wrapped his arms around her because that's what he could do.
That's what he could do.
She cried, and displayed an impressive array of profanity, but her struggles to be free were half-hearted at best. Carlton used her as his support, gritting his teeth through the pain his leg was in, because holding her, and calming her, and showing her he was here now and would answer all her questions was not only necessary, but what he wanted to do.
Plus she felt so good against his body, even pissed off and hurting and half-struggling.
Until she stomped on his foot with enough force to make him issue his own string of epithets, and once again they were at opposite ends of the table—only this time she held the cane, and he had a sinking feeling she intended to use it like a golf club.
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Juliet knew she was dangerously close to being completely out of control. Every emotion was battling for control: anger, pain, love, sadness, relief, fury, need.
His copper-colored cane was a satisfying weight in her hand. It could probably break a lot of things if she swung it just so, and she used to be a pretty good batter in the SBPD softball league.
Carlton stood watching her warily, his blue eyes focused on her the way they used to when he was most determined to figure her out—when he couldn't understand that what she was telling him was exactly what she meant, because back then it was hard for him to trust anyone. Earning his trust had been a huge gift she'd never really thanked him for, but today wasn't the day.
Breathing unevenly, she spat out, "I had a right to kill you myself. That's something else that bastard Donovan took from me."
He gripped the back of the nearest chair. "You might as well do it, then. I'm not getting any younger and I know I'm not getting any better."
It would have been funny but she knew he was serious—always the self-doubter, her Carlton, and she was sure his leg hurt by the way he was holding on to the chair.
Today wasn't the day for sympathy, either.
"Not yet." She wiped a tear off her face with her free hand. "Not yet. You haven't suffered enough. You haven't suffered like I have. Every day you were gone, every day—"
"Oh, the hell with that," he interrupted with irritation.
Juliet was taken aback, and filled with fresh fury, and her grip tightened on the cane handle because she was going to thwack him upside the head and—
He went on hotly, "You think you were the only one who suffered a loss? You had a piece of a badge, okay. You also had the key to my apartment and could have had anything you wanted of my belongings."
It was stipulated in his will, along with the money he'd left her.
"You said I was ripped from your life. Well, you were ripped from mine too, you know. I was ripped from mine. What happened to me was like being dropped naked in the middle of the desert. By the time I woke up in that hospital, I was already a memory to most everyone who'd known me." He ran one hand through his hair roughly. "I had nothing, Juliet. If I could have had one thing from that sorry life, it would have been you, but I had nothing. Not even a damn photo. So don't try to tell me you're the only one in the room who knows about grief. Every day you walked without me, I walked without you."
She stared at him, taking this in, parts of her heart melting.
"I walked without everything," he said more quietly. "But none of that was as hard as walking without you."
Juliet's legs were trembling again. She was trembling.
With a sigh, he turned the chair so he could sit down, and then pulled the ice tray closer, dumping half-melted ice into the soggy towel and pressing it to his jaw.
"And there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it except hope you were happy wherever you were." He looked at her, the blue of his eyes mesmerizing as always. "You can be angry. You can feel furious, or hurt, or betrayed—you have a right to feel all those things. But you don't get to decide whether I've suffered enough."
No, she realized, but couldn't speak yet. He was right. She didn't get to decide that.
It was getting tiresome, brushing tears off her face, but she did it once more. Then, approaching him slowly—and seeing how his shoulders tensed—she set the cane at his side and wrapped her arms around him from behind.
Carlton closed his eyes and leaned into the embrace.
She breathed in his scent—outdoors, a trace of sawdust, some faint shampoo—and held him, feeling his hair against her cheek. He was so warm, and so real. So alive.
She wouldn't apologize, and neither would he, and there was still a lot to talk about.
But hitting "pause" was what they both needed right this minute.
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