FOR HER EYES ONLY Page 18

  There was that funny little weightlessness again mixed with grim apprehension. He smiled. "Hi again, Lili." Michelle crossed her arms and nodded toward the bed. "Please … sit down."

  Jake slowly did as she requested, his gaze glued to the little girl playing with her toy.

  "I … I really don't know where to start, Jake."

  "The beginning is as good a place as any," he said quietly, finally dragging his attention away from the little girl to her mother.

  "Okay…" She sat on the bed, too, well away from him. "I can't tell you how very grateful I am for all you've done for me … and for Lili…"

  What was she saying? She didn't have to thank him. They were a family. His chest tightened. Weren't they?

  "I know how much you've put on the line to help me. To help us. I…" She sucked her bottom lip into her mouth. "I just want you to know that I won't be causing you problems anymore."

  He sat there for a long moment, feeling as if the room were spinning out of control. His entire line of sight narrowed in on her. Only her.

  "What … what are you saying?"

  "I … what I mean to say is, Lili … we'll be going into the city today. Catching a flight back to France tomorrow morning."

  Her words didn't sink in on the first go-round. He stared at her mouth, trying to verify that it had indeed moved … had really said what he thought it had. Michelle's unwavering sober expression told him it had.

  He sprung from the bed so quickly, he nearly catapulted her off the other side. "What?"

  "Please," she said quickly, rising from the bed and rounding it to face him. Her fingers felt warm and dry where she caressed the side of his face. "Please, don't make this any harder than it already is. I've caused enough trouble for you, Jake. You said yourself that your government will never be able to overlook my past. They'll never let me stay here." She blinked away the wetness filling her soft brown eyes. "And you…" Her smile was sweetly sad. "I can't see you anywhere else but here." She shrugged in a gesture of frustration. "Can't you see this is the only way? That my leaving is the only possible outcome? We've been fooling ourselves if we thought it could work out differently. It can't—"

  "It can," he said vehemently, gently grasping her upper arms and hauling her closer. "Michelle, please listen to me. I…" He hesitated at the slight shaking of her head. "Look, I've never been great with words. Lord knows I'm far from a poet, but we can work this out, together. We can go before the immigration review board, hell, court if we have to. My clean record can cancel out yours if it comes down to it."

  The shaking of her head grew more decisive. "I can't … won't let you do that, Jake."

  "Isn't that my decision to make?"

  "That's just it, isn't it? Every decision that's been made since I met you has been your decision. This one has to be mine."

  He found it nearly impossible to draw a breath. His heart thudded like a bass drum in his chest; fear threaded through his bloodstream like a poison. "Early on, before we … before we became a couple, you said something to me that really hit home. You said all you wanted was to find Lili—" he motioned toward the little girl who had laid her head against the desktop and was drifting to sleep "—and go home. Go back to the way your life was before all this started." His throat grew unbearably tight. "I remember sitting there looking at you, marveling over the feelings starting to grow even then, thinking that I was just waiting for my life to begin." He searched her eyes. "Don't you see, up until that point, I didn't know my life was missing anything. Not until I met you. I…" His throat made a clicking sound as he swab lowed. "I love you, Michelle. And I want you and Lili to stay. To be my family."

  He stood there for long moments, frozen. He'd never told anyone before that he loved them. Never bared his soul the way he had just bared it to Michelle. Hell, he hadn't even known he possessed a soul until she had touched it. But there it was. And he'd never felt so naked in his life.

  She averted her gaze. "I love you, too, Jake."

  Her voice was so low it was almost a whisper. But far from being the happy proclamation he might have wished it to be, it seemed a sad punctuation point. He watched her bite her lip, presumably to keep the team welling in her eyes from trickling down her cheeks. "But it's too late."

  There was a brief knock at the door. Jake moved to tell whoever it was to go the hell away, but Michelle placed a finger over his lips. "Yes?"

  The door opened a couple of inches. "I'm sorry to interrupt," Liz said quietly, her gaze darting everywhere but to their faces. "But if we're going to make it … well, we're going to have to leave in the next few minutes."

  "Okay," Michelle whispered.

  Liz hesitated. "You want me to take Lili downstairs to wait with me?"

  Michelle nodded, her gaze steadfastly on Jake's.

  A sleepy Lili easily took Liz's hand and was led from the room. The click of the door catch was unusually loud in the quiet room.

  Jake opened his mouth, trying to work it around words that made sense.

  "Shh," Michelle whispered, sliding into his embrace.

  Jake stood, not daring to touch her, groaning when he felt the hard thud of her heart beating through her rib cage. "I just want you to know that I…" Her words trailed off, her voice catching.

  Jake pulled back to look into her face.

  "I want you to know that our time together … it was the best of my life. The love I feel for you … it will never go away. I will carry it with me always." She let him go.

  Jake felt as if the very ground had been snatched out from under his feet.

  Michelle twisted the simple gold band on her finger. She opened his hand and slowly placed the hot band of metal in his palm, then closed his fingers over it.

  Then she was gone.

  * * *

  Chapter 15

  « ^ »

  Jake felt like breaking something. He wanted to take a baseball bat and pound something, anything into a pulp. Make it resemble the mess that was his life as he watched Liz back out of the drive with Michelle, little Lili waving at him through the back window.

  He didn't understand a thing. Despite all Michelle's explaining, a thousand and one questions remained. She loved him. His heart skipped a beat. She didn't want to stay. His heart dropped to the ground where surely someone would come by and stomp on it any second.

  The first person who came up was Pops.

  "Did they decide some shopping was in order?"

  The fact that someone had spoken took forever to register as Jake watched Liz's car disappear from view. It took a few moments longer for the words to make any sense.

  "What?"

  He turned to find Pops standing next to him. "I asked if the girls decided some shopping was in order, you know, for little Lili."

  "Shopping?"

  Pops's grin faded from his lined face. 'lake? Where are they going?"

  Jake turned and went into the house, stalking the length of it, then pacing back. When he came to a stop, Pops was just where he'd left him.

  "You know, I thought finding Lili … by reuniting Michelle with her daughter, that the three of you could start being a family."

  "Family? There's not going to be any family, Pops. Liz is taking Michelle and Lili into town so they can catch a flight out to France."

  "What?" It was Pops's turn to look as though someone had just sucker punched him.

  "I said—"

  "I heard what you just said, Jake. I'm just having trouble believing it." His chest puffed out as he took a deep breath. "You know, I thought this day couldn't possibly get any worse. First, the thing at your mom's gravesite, with Connor saying what he did, then my having to decide to break things off with Billie—"

  Jake held up his hand. "Whoa. Wait a minute. You're going a little too fast for me here." This communicating stuff was going to take a little longer to get used to. Then again, he was tempted to never speak again. Look at where his opening up had gotten him.

  He squinted at his fathe
r. "Did you just say you broke things off with Mel's mother?"

  Sean looked over his shoulder, relief washing over his face, apparently because Melanie wasn't anywhere near. "Yeah. She wasn't too happy about it, either. I mean, she didn't say anything—which is how I knew she wasn't happy. Just kind of made this oh sound. You know the kind. That small word that says so much yet so little?"

  Jake frowned. No, he didn't know.

  "Anyway, I just want to ask you one thing, Jacob William McCoy… Are you crazy? I mean, have you completely lost your mind?" He pointed a finger in the direction the car had gone. "Your brothers and I didn't go to all that trouble just so you could blithely wave as those two women leave your life. And I sure as hell know that you didn't go through what you have over the past few days toward that end, either."

  Jake stared at him mutely.

  Sean paced a short way, then stalked back, his eyes blazing. "What is it with you boys, anyway? I mean, I know I haven't always been a good father, that my parenting skills were pretty much nonexistent while you guys were growing up. But, good Lord, you all couldn't be any dumber had I purposely set out to make you that way."

  Jake blinked at him, completely dumbstruck.

  "Well, don't just stand there, you idiot! Go and bring them back!"

  He couldn't move. Then, finally, he found himself shaking his head. "You don't understand, Pops. I didn't let them go anywhere. Michelle just … well, she just up and left. Going after her isn't going to accomplish anything."

  "How can you be so sure?"

  "Because she made me that way."

  Sean looked at him long and hard, then turned and walked into the house, the screen door slapping closed behind him.

  * * *

  "Meet me at the diner in downtown Manchester."

  Edgar Mollens's final words echoed through Michelle's mind as she slowly slid into the red booth and anxiously glanced around the retro-style diner called Bo and Ruth's Paradise Diner.

  "Look, Maman! An angel." She absently watched as Lili plucked a candied cherub from a perch in the middle of the table.

  "Yes, ma cherie, an angel," she said, not having the energy to correct her. She feared the image of Jake's crushed expression was burned into her mind forever. She saw the haunted shadow in his eyes whenever she closed her own. She felt her heart break all over again at the memory of his speechless countenance, his obvious pain.

  Liz slid in across from her, her eyes watchful, her posture unsure. A wiry-haired waitress sashayed up to the booth and regarded Liz with a wide smile. "Well, if it isn't the little newlywed come to town for a visit."

  Michelle's gaze was riveted to the woman's face. She wondered how many people knew of her and Jake's … arrangement. She didn't dare call it a marriage. Not now. It was too dangerous to her mental health to think of their time together as anything more than an almost was.

  Liz coughed. "Mitch and I have been married a whole two months now, Myra. I hardly think that qualifies as newlyweds."

  Michelle felt her cheeks go hot. Of course. The woman Liz had called Myra wasn't referring to her; she was talking about Liz.

  "And who do we have here?" Myra asked.

  "I'm Lili," Michelle's daughter announced.

  "Well, hello there, little Lili. I'm Myra. And do I ever have just the thing for you."

  "Ice cream!" Lili exclaimed.

  Michelle watched her daughter as if from a distance. While much remained the same, in the two hours since they had been reunited, she'd come to notice certain changes, both subtle and obvious. The closest she could come to describing it was that her daughter had undergone a certain type of Americanization in the two months since Gerald had taken her from France. Her English, while accented, was clear. Her behavior was decidedly more outgoing. And she bore no obvious emotional scars from her ordeal.

  Tears welled in her eyes as she counted her blessings.

  She reached out to touch her daughter's hair, but Lili pushed her hand away as she introduced the angel to her stuffed elephant, Julianne.

  Michelle's gaze trailed through the window to the street. Was Edgar already there somewhere, watching them?

  Myra served Lili a child-size portion of cherry pie complete with ice cream, then poured coffee for Michelle and Liz. After a few failed attempts at striking up a conversation with what must have seemed to her a morose pair, the waitress shrugged her skinny shoulders and sashayed behind the main counter, where Michelle noticed two beefy men holding coffee cups and openly watching them from their stools. Through the window that looked into the kitchen, a man wearing a white knit cap and another woman also looked on.

  Liz took a long pull from her cup. "Look, Michelle … I know I promised I wouldn't ask any unwelcome questions, but…" She sighed, then sat back in the booth. "I'm going to have to break that promise. Are you sure you know what you're doing?"

  Michelle stared into her cup, trying not to compare her romantic future to the murky black liquid. She slowly nodded. "Yes. It is the only way to guarantee Jake won't get into trouble."

  Liz's laugh surprised her. "Did you explain this to Jake that way? Believe me, the last thing any of the McCoys are afraid of is a little trouble."

  Michelle managed a small smile. If she knew anything, she knew that. But she wouldn't, couldn't ask Jake to sacrifice any more for her than he already had. This was the only way she could guarantee he would remained untouched.

  As Edgar had explained it to her, Jake was facing prison time for his part in this "whole charade." She smoothed her daughter's hair from her face, Lili's interest in her treat making her forget to push her away. If she gave herself up with no further fight, Edgar had agreed to leave Jake and his involvement in the entire matter out of it. But she, of course, would effectively be barred from ever entering the States again.

  "He doesn't even know me," she found herself whispering.

  Liz frowned, saying nothing for a long moment. "I'd bet you two know each other far better than either of you will admit to." She crossed her legs under the table. "Knowing someone sometimes has very little to do with knowing the minute details about each other's lives. If you're lucky, like Mitch and I are, it has to do with your knowing each other. Know what I mean?"

  Michelle squinted at her. "In the … biblical sense?" she said, remembering the company of an impressionable four-year-old.

  "Then there's that," Liz said, color warming her cheeks. "But no. What I mean is, without your having to say it, you know and he knows that what you share goes beyond the details. Details that were important before you met, but take on a whole new meaning afterward."

  Michelle searched her face, trying to figure out what she was saying.

  Liz sighed. "Okay, look, I'm still pretty new at all this love stuff myself. It took me most of my life to figure out that home isn't a place, but a person." She waved her hand. "But that's neither here nor there. What I want to tell you is that I've known all the McCoys for … well, for far longer than I'd like to admit to." Her smile told Michelle otherwise. "And Jake … well, Jake is never one to impulsively jump into anything. He's the type of guy who has his routines and never, I mean never, veers from them. Never, that is, until you."

  Michelle averted her gaze, feeling her cheeks heat again. Liz's words made her remember her and Jake's first night together. Their long conversation about sex and his truckload of inhibitions … and her lack of them. She appreciated the irony of the situation. His argument that a couple should know each other better, that sex should be more than just a physical coming together, but that it had as much to do with respect and a general liking of the person you were sleeping with. Then there had been her counterargument that things like respect and liking had nothing to do with physical attraction.

  Oh, how all that had changed, and quickly.

  Liz was looking out the window as she continued. "I guess what I'm trying to say, Michelle, is this." She met her gaze. "Jake had more than the reasons you think to do what he did. He might have said he
was marrying you to help you, but I suspect even he's coming to see what a lie that was." Her sudden smile seemed completely out of place. "As a matter of fact, I think he's already figured it out."

  Michelle sensed his presence before she saw him. She turned her head to where he stood just inside the door, his gaze glued to her face.

  Liz laid her hand on top of Michelle's where it laid on the table. "I can't tell you how much it must have taken him to come down here. Promise me one thing—that you'll hear him out."

  Michelle nodded slowly.

  Liz slipped from the booth. Lili had finished her pie and easily gave her hand to Liz when the woman offered to show her exactly how those little angels were made in the kitchen. Michelle felt as though her heart had leaped up and was firmly lodged in her throat. But before she could say anything, the clang of a cowbell announced the arrival of another man.

  Edgar Mollens.

  Michelle bit on her lip as much to keep from crying out as to keep the tears from falling. Telling Jake once that she must leave had practically ripped her in two. To tell him goodbye again…

  Her gaze fastened on his dear, dear face as he looked first at Edgar, then at her, his confused expression endearing him to her further. But the last thing she expected was the slow shaking of his head. No words. No protests. No declarations. Merely a simple gesture that said too much.

  Edgar cleared his throat. "McCoy."

  It seemed to take a moment for Jake to realize Edgar had spoken. "Mollens."

  Edgar looked at Michelle meaningfully. "Your decision was the best possible one, Miss Lambert. You may not see that now, but rest assured, you will. And so will Jake."

  "McCoy," Jake said quietly.

  "What?" Edgar regarded Jake with a frown.

  "I said McCoy. Her name's Mrs. McCoy." Jake didn't budge his gaze from Michelle's face as he said the words. "No matter what, we are married, Michelle. Your leaving won't change that. Not for me." He lifted his hand where his wedding band glinted in the afternoon light. "I'm married to you no matter where you are physically." His voice lowered to a gravelly roar. "I'd prefer it if you were here."