Husband by Choice. Tara Quinn Taylor
pulled out her tablet. Turned it on.
The certification was legible, but small. Holding the tablet with her thumb over her identifying information, she carried it over to show Lila.
The woman lifted her glasses. Read.
“Thank you.”
Jenna returned the tablet to her purse.
“When you’re ready, you bring me the rest of that and whatever I see there will remain between you and me. You have my word on it.”
“It’s not you, Lila, I just...”
Holding up her hand, Lila stood. “When you’re ready,” she said. “Just remember that I am here. That’s all I ask. When you need me, you do whatever you have to do to find me.” The woman repeated what she’d said the night before.
Jenna nodded, more because it was expected of her than because she could foresee any circumstance where she might do as the woman asked.
“And when you have something to say, there is space, right here, between you and me, to put the truth, no questions asked.”
Emotion rose inside of her, tightening her throat. Jenna picked up her tie-dyed cloth bag and slipped away.
“DID YOU WORK TODAY?” Max returned to the living room after exchanging wet scrubs for a pair of red basketball shorts and a gray T-shirt with a faded FBI emblem. It was left over from a trip he and Jill had taken to Washington, D.C., a decade before. As he walked in, he found Chantel standing at the mantel over the fireplace, looking at pictures.
Mostly they were of Caleb, taken in the different stages of growing from newborn to two. The center photo was of him and Meri, taken on their wedding day.
In one corner was an old photograph of a much younger Meri with her parents and little brother.
And in the other, Max’s favorite photo of Jill—in a sundress, not a uniform, taken on the day he’d passed his residency. There’d been a party. And she’d been wholly his wife that day. For the entire day.
It had been nice.
“Yeah, I worked and then headed up here as soon as I was off shift,” Chantel said, her back to the photos now as she watched him.
“Shouldn’t you be getting back?”
She’d asked to come in.
“I’m off tomorrow.” She was watching him. Chantel ran her finger along the edge of the frame that held Jill’s photo. “You remember that night?” Chantel asked. She’d been at the party, too. Everyone who’d played a part in their lives had been there.
“Of course I remember.”
“I got drunk and told you I thought you were great.”
Actually what she had said was that no other guy added up to him and if Jill hadn’t snatched him first, she’d have done so. He’d just completed his residency. Had already had an invitation to share a well-established pediatric practice. Everyone was telling him how great he was that night.
“I’ve been embarrassed about that ever since,” Chantel said now, while Max felt the computer in the other room drawing him.
Meri was “out there” somewhere. Facing a second night without him. As he faced a second night without her. Their first two nights apart since they got married. Even the night she’d had Caleb, they’d been together. She’d spent the night in the hospital and he’d stayed with her.
“I didn’t want you to think that I was coming on to you while you were married to my best friend,” Chantel said, turning back to face him, her hands on her hips.
She was a pretty woman. Slender. Blonde. Brown eyes. A little tall for his tastes. A little hard around the edges. But still, damned attractive. Especially when she smiled. And let her hair down out of its ponytail as it was now.
She wasn’t smiling though. “I loved Jill,” she said. “I would never have done anything to hurt her.”
“I know that.”
“She was such a fool, you know?”
No, he didn’t know. Jill had been larger than life. A true warrior. Everyone thought she was amazing.
And the way her life had ended, saving the life of a fellow officer, she’d died as she’d lived—a heroine.
“She didn’t get what she had in you,” Chantel said now. “If I’d been lucky enough to find a guy as great as you, I’d damn sure have thought twice about strapping on the gun and going out to fight crime.”
“It’s what she was born to do. Why should she be less than herself just because she was married?”
Okay, so maybe he’d have liked it a hell of a lot better if Jill could have been happy with a desk job. Making detective and tracking criminals with a little bit of distance. Or teaching at the academy.
But it hadn’t been what she’d wanted. Wouldn’t have made her happy....
“You could have had any number of great guys,” he said now, remembering the flock of admirers that always seemed to be trailing behind the attractive cop.
“I guess.”
“You seeing anyone?” he asked. Because he wanted to ask her to take him seriously and help him find Meri’s ex-husband. He was growing more and more certain that Steve was somehow behind this.
“I was seeing someone. A captain of another squad. It didn’t work out.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m not. And I didn’t come here to talk about my love life,” she said, moving away from the mantel. “I came to see what I could do to help you,” she said. “I heard the concern in your voice last night, Max. And while, officially, I’m pretty convinced that Meri left of her own accord and is fine, I’m also your friend. I’ve got the next couple of days off, and I wanted to make a personal appearance at the station here, which I did tonight, to talk to the guys and see what I could find out about where Meredith might be. You know...in case you want to talk to her, to maybe patch things up....”
It was a wonderful, selfless thing to do. A friend thing to do.
“I just...you called and asked for help and...it’s what Jill would want me to do, to help you. It’s...she made me promise, the night before you two married, that if anything ever happened to her, and you needed help, I’d be there. I just wanted to, you know, clear the air, first, in case you—” she tipped her head from side to side “—got the wrong idea about that...night.” With her thumb she gestured to the photos behind them.
He might have wondered a time or two about Chantel’s interest in him...but everyone knew that he and Jill had a good marriage. And Chantel was Jill’s very best friend. From grade school. It was understood that he and Chantel would grow to have a genuine fondness for each other. Hell, they’d spent every holiday of his marriage to Jill together.
And hadn’t spoken more than half a dozen times since his first wife’s death.
“You’re fine,” he said now, crossing his arms as he stood there in his bare feet eager to get to the business at hand. “No wrong ideas about that night. So what did you find out?”
“Nothing,” she said. “They aren’t looking for her. They hadn’t yet opened a missing person’s case when her van was spotted and they didn’t need to do so once they found her note. There was nothing suspicious, nothing that warranted expenditure of already limited manpower. Let’s face it, Max, an abductor isn’t going to stand around and wait while she writes a note.”
“He would if he was her ex-husband forcing her to write it.”