In Hot Pursuit (24 page)

Will could feel
Nellie's eyes on him, and after a long stretch of silence, when she offered
nothing more he turned and saw her concern, and her love. He didn't deserve
either. He didn't deserve anything but the grim loneliness he'd endured since
he was sixteen. Then Nellie reached out and squeezed his hand, and said,
"Whatever the circumstances were, I know you do not have it in you to
murder anyone. So tell me what really happened."

As Will sat
beside Nellie, their bodies not touching, a despondent breeze swept about him.
And without warning, a deep sense of loneliness settled over him, an oppressive
reminder of the solitary existence he seemed destined to bear because of an
unalterable past...

"Will, I'm
frustrated that you won't talk, and I want to know what happened," Nellie
said.

Will too felt
frustrated, and angered, by the turmoil inside that compelled his silence. But
he also knew Nellie didn’t give her love lightly, so she deserved an
explanation.

A cool sweat
broke out on his brow as distant memories moved through his mind like clips
from a gruesome movie: his father's drunken rages, the beatings, the countless
foster homes where he and Kelsey would be settled, only to be returned home to
face the cycle of drunkenness, rage and beatings again. His mouth compressed in
a harsh line. It was a matter of survival, of instincts, and ultimately of
murder.

He balled a
fist then stiffened his arm to keep from striking something, and replied,
"I got the vasectomy to stop the cycle of abuse." He arched a cynical
brow. "It goes back a ways in my family. My father. My grandfather."

"Child
abuse?" Nellie said, staring at him. "You never gave any indication
you'd been abused. Can you talk about it?"

"Sure,"
Will replied. "How graphic do you want me to get?"

"Whatever
it takes to put your mind at rest," Nellie said. She placed her hand on
his arm, and held it there as she said, "I love you, Will, and I'm trying
to understand why you've built a wall around your heart. Please don't shut me
out now. Tell me what happened."

Will heaved a
labored sigh as a gruesome scene unfolded in his mind. "My father was
beating the crap out of my mother and I hit him over the head with a
bottle." He could still smell the liquor on his father's breath and see
the tendons standing out in his neck and hear his mother's scream as his father
raised up after being struck, then fell forward across the bed. When his father
didn't move, Will rolled him over, and he lay face up in a growing pool of
blood, eyes lifeless,
the
hardened lines of his face
relaxed...

"He had to
be stopped," Will said, looking straight ahead.

Nellie turned
his face, forcing him to look at her as she said, "How can you call it
murder? You didn't mean to kill him."

Will let out a
snort of derision. "I was strong when I was sixteen, and I remember the
force behind that blow," he replied. "All I knew, when I raised the
bottle to hit him over the head, was he had to be stopped. Permanently."

"Even if
the blow was harder than you intended, you shouldn’t blame yourself for what
happened?" Nellie said. "The law does allow for you to protect and
defend someone else."

Will held her
gaze, but instead of seeing hazel eyes, he saw the blue-gray eyes of his mother
peering out from a haggard face with lines that years of cruelty had placed
there. She'd had no way out. She'd suffered so much at the hands of his father.
"When I was young, I vowed that as soon as I was big enough I'd stop him
however I could. And I did. At least my mother had six good years before she
died."

"Were you
charged with anything?" Nellie asked.

Will shook his
head. "No. The judge said it was in defense of my mother. But the judge
didn't know the force I'd put behind that blow. But I did. I used all my
strength to stop him."

"Which is
probably what it took to do that," Nellie said. "A man in a drunken
rage has abnormal strength. You saved your mother from a brutal father, and she
had several good years after that, and now it's all behind you."

Will gave a
weary sigh. "Is it?"

"Of course
it is," Nellie said, "unless you want to spend the rest of your life
letting it eat away at you. So my only question now is
,
do you love me enough to consider marriage?"

The muscles in
Will's jaws flexed. "I love you, but I can't marry you because I can't
guarantee I won't one day strike back in anger. I almost did with Mike."

Nellie looked
at Will with a start. "What do you mean? Mike never said anything to
me."

"I'm
surprised," Will said. He described the incident with Mike at Ocean Bay,
when Mike refused to turn back. "I actually raised my fist to a
child."

"Why didn't
you go ahead and hit him then?" Nellie asked. "What stopped
you?"

Almost
overwhelmed by the feeling of remorse that just thinking about the incident
brought, Will replied, "Mike flinched, and I saw in his eyes the fear I
had as a boy."

"Then
that's half the battle," Nellie said. "As for Mike, he was testing
you, and believe
me,
I know how he can test. More than
once he's pushed me right up to the brink of slapping him across the face. But
like you, I stopped myself. Did your mother ever hit you?"

"No,"
Will replied. "She was the most caring person I ever knew."

Nellie gave a
kind of grudging laugh. "Then I rest my case. You know as well as I that
child abuse is not genetic, or hereditary. It's learned behavior. And so is
caring and gentleness. You have the choice of discarding your parents' negative
traits and taking on their positive ones. But as long as you remain fixated on
the wrongs of your father and grandfather, you'll never be free. You are the
only person completely accountable for your own actions."

Will's brows
gathered in contemplation. Nellie's simple statement,
you are the only person completely accountable for your own actions
,
seemed to somehow free him.

"Loneliness
is an insidious thing, sweetheart," Nellie said. "Don't condemn
yourself to a life of solitude because of the wrongdoings of your father and
grandfather." She slipped her arms around his neck and looked into his
eyes. Tracing a finger along his jaw and following the contour of his lips, she
whispered, "The only way you can break the cycle of abuse is to create the
home and family you never had and be the father that was denied you. Make a
happy home. You do have that power, and the love inside you to do it."

Will knew she
was right. His love for Nellie was absolute. Thinking long and hard about what
she'd said, he wondered if he could, with certainty, discard his father's
negative traits if he set his mind to it. Somehow, he felt a new confidence
that with Nellie at his side, he could.

After a few
minutes of contemplative silence, he turned to Nellie, and whispered against
her ear, "I love you, Nellie. You're far more than I deserve."

"And I
love you too," Nellie whispered back. "I don't know why I'm so lucky
to have you in my life. On top of everything else, you make my heart flutter."
She kissed him and added, "What's more, while I slip into the bathing suit
I don't have, you can wait for me in the springhouse. You do remember our
look, but don't touch
rule, don't
you?"

Will smiled,
and replied, "Yeah, I remember. I'm the lovesick fool who suggested
it." He kissed her and headed for the springhouse.

***

Nellie checked
on Mike, and from his easy, rhythmic breathing, knew he was sleeping soundly.
Moving into the shadows, she shed her clothes, slipped on her robe and headed
for the springhouse. When she stepped inside, she turned the flashlight on
Will, who sat waist-deep in the steamy water, droplets rolling down his
well-muscled chest.

"Mike's
dead to the world," she said, aware of Will's naked body below the
wavering surface of the crystal-clear water as the beam from the flashlight
washed over him. Feeling the erratic beating of her heart, she clicked off the
flashlight and rested it beside the pool.

She tossed her
robe aside, but as she started to step into the water, Will clicked on the
light and focused it on her. "Hold it right there," he said. "We
agreed to the look don't touch rule, and I want to look. I've been having this
fantasy for weeks and I want to see if I got the image right."

"Make it
quick then." Nellie stood motionless, tingles moving down her body as the
beam of light washed over her. She thought she could feel heat burning from the
light, but realized it was radiating from inside. "Will," she said,
"I'm getting embarrassed."

"Never be
embarrassed in front of me, honey," Will said. "Come here." He
reached out his hand to her then clicked off the light. Nellie moved into his
arms and wrapped her hands around his neck, and Will cradled her against him.
"I love you so much," he said. "I never thought I could love
anyone like this, and I do want to marry you, but..."

"But
what?" Nellie asked in a weary voice. She'd thought things were resolved.

"You said
you wanted another child."

"That's
not important now," Nellie said, no longer caring. "All I want is
you."

"It's
important to me," Will insisted. "I want to father a child with you.
I can have the vasectomy reversed."

"You'd do
that for me?" Nellie felt a warmth curling inside at the thought of Will
fathering her child, and all the love that would go into raising their daughter...
or son.

"I'd do it
for us. And for Mike, so he could have a sibling. If you'll marry me."

Nellie
tightened her arms around his neck. "Yes," she said, planting tiny
kisses along his jaw… down the curve of his neck
…
 
"Yes... yes... yes... I'll marry you."

"Then, I
move we find a sea captain first thing in the morning. I don't want to spend
another night with bent knees and curled toes, unless my legs are curled around
you."

"My
thoughts exactly." Nellie raised her lips to his, but before kissing him thoroughly,
she said, "Since we'll be getting married first thing in the morning, I
suggest we scrap the
look but don't touch
boundary and get right down to some serious body mapping."

Will responded
to her suggestion in the way Nellie knew he would.

And the rest of
the evening was pure ecstasy…

***

Katy crouched
beside her bowl of food and rested her muzzle against her paws. "I know
what's going on, Katy," Will said. "You're waiting for Zeke to check
out your food bowl so you can put him in his place. But you've got to stop that
sort of thing since we're going to be a family now. A real family." He
slit open a fresh bag of cat chow and put a handful into Zeke's bowl.

He looked down
at Katy. "Well, maybe I judged you too quickly. Maybe you're just not
hungry," he said. "But I sure am. Making love to Nellie in that hot
springs pool, and spending the rest of the night thinking about her female
assets, has me hungry as a horse. Well, actually I'm hungry in other ways too.
What a woman. What a body. Curves that won't quit. And every night of my life
I'll have all those nice curves in my arms."

Katy cocked an
ear, but her eyes remained fixed on the small hole in the door of the cabinet
not far from where she lay. "I don't know why they call you women the
weaker sex," Will said, plunking his mug of coffee on the table and
slipping into the booth. "All they'd have needed were a few Nellie Reids
placed strategically around the Roman Empire and history would have taken a
different turn." He took a sip from his mug, then reached down and
scratched behind Katy's ear. She wagged her tail then lolled onto her side,
gave an audible sigh and closed her eyes.

Zeke poked his
head through the door in his cabinet. Easing one paw then another carefully
through the door, he inched quietly and stealthily toward Katy's bowl. With his
nose to the rim, he paused and eyed Katy, who lay with her head against the
floor, eyes closed. Lowering his head into the bowl, he mouthed a small kibble.
The crunch of teeth on kibble brought Katy jumping to her feet, alert and ready
to defend her bowl. Dog jaws clicked. Cat claws raked out lightning fast. Katy
yelped. But instead of rushing back into the cabinet as he'd done in the past,
Zeke humped his back, bristled his tail, and slowly circled Katy, who stood
unmoving by her bowl. Katy lowered her head and pointed her nose toward the rim
of the bowl. Zeke rushed forward, nabbing Katy on the nose, sending her jumping
back.

"Uh,
oh," Will said, realizing he'd forgotten to put Zeke's bowl on the floor.
"Sorry old pal." He placed the bowl of cat chow on the floor in front
of Zeke, and looked at Katy. "You deserved that, Katy," he said.
"You've helped yourself to Zeke's food a few times."

Katy lowered
herself to her tummy, groaned in disgust and rested her head on her front paws
again. "Good girl," Will said. "Now, you and Zeke settle your
differences. After all, you'll be Zeke's step-sister soon." He smiled.
"Very soon."

Grabbing a
package of sweet rolls, he climbed up the ladder to the salon, anxious to get on
with the man-to-man talk he intended to have with Mike. Arriving at the camping
area, he saw that Nellie's sleeping bag was empty, and he started toward the
springhouse.

"You can't
go in there," Mike called out. "Mom's taking a bath."

"Oh,"
Will said, looking longingly at the concrete structure. Setting the package of
sweet rolls on the log, he tossed some sticks on the fire, all the while
contemplating his opening words to Mike about his intention toward his mother.

Mike sat on the
log. "Are we getting ready to go now?" he asked.