Marrying Daisy Bellamy (25 page)

T
he Hubbles had been understanding about rescheduling their photo shoot with Daisy. There could be no way to concentrate and focus on work, not with this cataclysmic news buzzing in her head.

Besides, she had to find Logan and tell him, and the sooner the better. She wanted him to hear it from her first.

And dear God, she wanted for it not to be a problem between them. They had created enough of those on their own.

She pulled up to his office, in an old brick building facing the town square. Located next to the local radio station and dangerously close to the Sky River Bakery, the agency seemed to fit right into the bustle of Avalon's small but colorful downtown. The large front window was painted with the company logo and O'Donnell Insurance Agency—You're Safe With Us.

The logo—an heraldic shield—was not the most original choice. However, given the success of the company, it was probably the
right
choice. The brand consul
tant Logan had hired when he'd taken over the agency insisted that the symbol be instantly recognizable.

She sat in the car for a few minutes, trying to collect her thoughts. The news about Julian was still so fresh, it was burning in her chest. Deep breath, she told herself. Deep breath. There was no way to make this less startling than it was, though she resolved to choose her words carefully. She even rehearsed a few attempts.

“I just got the most incredible news….”

No, then he might instantly think she was pregnant. Not a good topic for them, not at all.

“Logan, there's something I need to tell you right away…”

He'd probably think she wanted to talk about their marriage yet again. Of late, they'd had a number of fruitless conversations that circled around and never seemed to resolve the unsettled feelings that kept cropping up between them.

“Hey, guess what? The love of my life came back from the dead.”

That made her press her hand to her mouth. Good lord.

“Just be honest,” she admonished herself, getting out of the car. “Just tell the truth.”

She stepped into the office, setting off a small bell over the door. “Hey, Brandi,” she said, greeting Logan's assistant. Brandi had been the manager and engineer next door at the radio station, and Logan had lured her away. Sometimes she played electric bass in the same band as Daisy's stepdad, Noah. Brandi was loyal and reliable.

She was also drop-dead gorgeous and favored incredibly cute clothes.

Daisy had never been bothered by this. She never even wondered why this didn't bother her. The answer might be a little too revealing.

“Is Logan busy?” she asked.

Brandi glanced at the phone. “Nope, go right ahead.”

Logan's private office had an old-fashioned door with a wavy glass pane and his name in the same lettering as the front sign. She took a deep breath, arranged her face into an expression she hoped would hide her nerves, and opened the door.

“Hi, Logan,” she said brightly.

“Hey.” He closed his computer's browser with a click of the mouse.

She wondered if he closed it too hastily. Then she reminded herself why she was here. “Sorry to interrupt your day.”

“Don't worry about it. I was thinking about you, too. About us, actually.”

“What about us?”

He regarded her solemnly. “I've been doing some thinking.”

Now? she thought.
Now?

“You know,” he continued, “like we're supposed to do for our counseling session.”

“Logan—”

“Look, I'll never be sorry I married you because of Charlie, but maybe—”

“Please, this can't wait.”

“You think this shit is easy?” he asked. “The least you could do is listen—”

“It's Julian,” she blurted out.

Logan's eyes narrowed. He leaned back in his chair, steepling his fingers. “Great. Now what?”

“He's been found. He's back.” She struggled to keep her voice from breaking on a surge of joy and wonder.

He shifted his weight forward, planting his elbows on the desk. “What do you mean? His body was found?”

“No…but…yes. Sorry, I'm flustered. I just found out
myself. Connor got the call from Julian. He wasn't on the chopper when it went down. He…I don't know any details. He was taken by some group in Colombia—a paramilitary group that served a drug lord, and he's been a prisoner this whole time. But he escaped, and he called his brother from Washington today. And he's on his way to Avalon. He'll be here by dinnertime.”

Logan sat very still. His gaze moved over her with steady deliberation. “Wow,” he said. “Pretty amazing news.”

“A miracle,” she said. “I never dreamed something like this could happen. Nobody did.” The instant she said it, she heard her own lie. She had dreamed of this, for Julian to somehow be alive, hundreds of times since the terrible news had arrived. Watching Logan, she suspected he was more clued in to her than she'd ever imagined.

“So what's next?” he asked. “His ascent into heaven?”

“Logan.”

He got up, pacing restlessly around the office. “Don't get me wrong, I never wanted the guy to be dead, but you'll excuse me if I don't break out the champagne and cigars.”

She winced at his tone. “Connor explained to him on the phone that you and I are together now.” Her stomach clenched even as she spoke.
I'm sorry, Julian. I'm so sorry. How could I have known?

Logan played a hand through his hair, roughening the red locks. “I'm glad for the guy, and I feel bad for him at the same time.”

“Fair enough,” she said quietly. Later, she knew she would wonder about those lost months. What had he endured? How had he suffered?

“What does this mean for us?” Logan asked bluntly.

She hesitated. There was a part of her—a very big
part—that yearned to turn back the clock, back to a time when she was Julian's fiancée, dreaming of their life together. However, the reality was, she had done the only thing that made sense and saved her sanity after getting the dreaded news. She had picked up the shattered pieces of her heart and put them back together as well as she could. Then she'd moved ahead with her life.

“This news is like five minutes old,” she said. “It's barely sunk in.”

“Just answer the question,” Logan said. “Are you going to dump me now so you can go back to your old boyfriend?”

She caught her breath, feeling her heart speed up. “I'm married to you,” she said. “I made a commitment to you, and I don't take that lightly.”

“That doesn't exactly answer the question.”

She understood his hostile tone. For him, this news was more than a surprise. It was a threat. She studied him for a moment. “I need to see him,” she said. “Can you understand that I need to see him? Tonight, if he's willing…”

“Why wouldn't he be?”

“He didn't come back here expecting to find me married,” she said. “He might not be too keen on seeing me.”

“That's his problem.”

Daisy decided both she and Logan needed more time to digest this news, so she picked up her bag and turned toward the door. She paused before leaving. “Sorry, I interrupted you when I first got here. What was it you were going to say to me earlier?”

“Never mind. It wasn't important.”

O
n his way home from work, Logan passed the Hilltop Tavern, same as he did every day. The only difference was that today, he was nearly overwhelmed by a raging desire to stop at the bar. He could practically taste the cold bite of just-tapped beer going down so smoothly. At the bottom of the pitcher was sweet nothingness to carry him away on a raft of oblivion.

He caught himself salivating like one of Pavlov's dogs. “Jesus, get a grip,” he said aloud, reaching for his mobile phone. He thumbed in his sponsor's number and hit Send.

“Eddie Haven,” said a voice on the other end of the line.

“Hey, it's Logan. Is this a good time?”

“Sure. I was headed to the gym. Maureen's dead asleep after a long day.”

“She all right?”

“Other than feeling like she's been pregnant for years rather than months, she's fine,” Eddie said. “We just learned it's a boy. We're going to name him Jabez.
You know Maureen, she's a planner. It's the librarian in her.”

“Yeah, that's great,” Logan said, trying to sound interested.

“Sounds like something's on your mind. How about you meet me at the gym?”

“You got it.” Logan glanced down at his midsection as he waited at a stoplight. The pounds were not exactly melting off. Daisy had always been kind about it when he brought the subject up. “More of you to love,” she liked to say. Or maybe she didn't like saying it and was only trying to be nice.

Nice. That was exactly what Daisy was. A nice person. She was so freaking nice, it drove him wacko sometimes. She never said a word when his sweet tooth got the better of him and he went for a second bowl of ice cream or a stack of Fig Newtons that spanned from his thumb to his little finger. She was too freaking
nice
to nag.

Or maybe she didn't give a shit.

He thrust the dark thought away and changed into his gym clothes. He'd already started bench pressing when Eddie showed up.

“What's up, bud?” Eddie asked, doing warm-ups on a nearby mat.

“My wife's fiancé came back from the dead,” said Logan.

“Very funny.”

Logan pressed the bar upward, barely feeling the weight. “Do you see me laughing?” As succinctly as he could, he related the sequence of events.

“Man,” said Eddie. “
Man
. That is unbelievable.”

“Tell me about it.”

“I got a better idea. You tell
me
about it.”

“I've been antsy all day,” Logan admitted. “I usually
don't even think about wanting a drink or popping an Oxy. Today it was all I could do to keep driving past the Hilltop Tavern. That's when I called you.”

“You're smarter than you look.”

Logan added more weights to the bar and settled back again. “Sometimes.”

“So what is it that's making you so antsy, besides the general freakiness of the situation?”

He thought about that for a minute. “She and this guy—Julian Gastineaux—they were like, totally in love.”

“What's your worst fear? That Daisy will leave you for Gastineaux?”

Logan pressed up again, welcoming the strain of the extra weight. He was about to say no, but he thought about it for a while. In his mind's eye, he could still see Daisy's face as she related the miraculous news of Julian's survival. In that moment, she'd seemed more alive than she had in months.

He increased his weight load again. Press up. Press down. “My worst fear is that she'll spend the rest of her life wishing she could be with him.” The admission came from Logan with a wrenching honesty.

“Then again,” he added, “it's kind of ironic. Before she dropped the Julian bomb, I was going to tell her maybe being married wasn't the best thing for us after all.”

Eddie went to the bench next to Logan and threaded some weights on a bar. After a while, he said, “You've been saying some things about your marriage for a long time. Since before Gastineaux showed up again.”

“Yeah. But now that this has happened—this Julian business—there's no way to talk about our problems with the marriage.”

“What do you mean?”

“If I tell Daisy now, she'll go running straight to him.”

“And how would you feel about that?”

“Like shit, man. How do you think? And what kind of message would it send to Charlie? To bail at the first sign of trouble?”

“Hell, Logan. You got more questions than me,” said Eddie.

“And no answers. Not yet, anyway.”

 

Every single night of his captivity, Julian had imagined his own homecoming. It was one of the mental exercises he'd done regularly to keep himself from ending up crazier than a shit-house rat. He had developed a habit of picturing the longed-for scene in his mind's eye down to the last detail. He saw himself getting off the train. He'd be in his BDUs, a duffel bag slung over his shoulder.

The second he spotted Daisy, the duffel would drop with a thud.

She would fly into his arms, literally, fly, in a blur of speed. He could feel her slender strong legs clasped at his waist, her arms clinging around his neck.
Yes
.

She had the best way of laughing when she got emotional. In his mind, he'd heard that special, broken laughter every day. And he could feel the warm silk of her hair and inhale her scent—fruity shampoo—and taste her mouth as he set her down and bent to kiss her.

Yeah, without that dream of home, he really might have gone bat-shit insane.

The reality, his actual homecoming, was different.

He sat alone on the train on the final leg of his journey. Connor had offered to drive up to the airport at
Albany, but Julian opted for the train instead. He wore the civilian clothes they'd given him.

The staff psychiatrist had advised him not to make any big changes in his life. He was supposed to step back and let the readjustment take its own pace. Julian was pretty sure that would be impossible for him, but he agreed to give it a try.

The world outside streaked past the window. Albany and its outskirts were dull with industry, strip malls and big-box stores and depressing housing developments. Soon, however, the colors outside shifted to the intense green and gold of the Catskills. The scenery changed to lakes and rivers, neatly laid-out farms and towns, time-worn hills and cliffs rising to the west.

The approach to Avalon was just as he'd pictured it so many times in his mind. It was nearly dark, but he spotted the covered bridge spanning the river, and Willow Lake in the distance, rimmed by forest land and the occasional cottage.

The train clanked and hissed to a halt. He shouldered his bag, which still bore its tag—Second Lieutenant J. Gastineaux—and headed outside, feeling the coolness of the upstate wilderness in the breeze on his face. Avalon was an ordinary small town, like so many others all across the country. It looked so damn good to him. So…normal.

He reminded himself it wouldn't be the welcome he'd held in his heart for so long. But there was his brother, standing with arms open wide. They came together in a clash of joy, and in the midst of the fierce hug, Julian lost it, choking on sobs. He finally felt completely safe. During his ordeal, he'd forgotten that sensation.

“I can't believe it,” Connor said. “I can't believe you're here.”

“Me, neither.” Julian dragged his sleeve across his face. “I thought this day would never come.”

Connor picked up his bag. “Let's go home. Lolly's got a feast prepared. And wait till you see your niece.” They got in the truck and started driving.

“Zoe was a baby when I left.”

“Now she's a little kid with all the answers.”

Julian remembered Charlie at three, a happy kid, in love with the world. What was he like now?

“I'm glad she has all the answers,” he said to Connor, “because I got all kinds of questions.”

“We all do, my brother.”

“Everything around here looks pretty much the same,” said Julian. “But I know it can't be.”

“You still have your friends and family,” Connor assured him. “We were all demolished when you were reported dead. And we never stopped thinking of you and missing you, not for a minute.”

“I'm—I guess I don't know what to say to that. Thanks for not forgetting me?”

“Say anything,” Connor advised him. “You get a free pass.”

Julian understood that this was an opening for him to start talking about what had happened. In his debriefing, he had been strongly advised to seek further counseling, and he fully intended to do that. For now, he just wanted to be with his brother.

“I appreciate it,” he said. “One of these days, I'll take you up on it.”

“I need to ask you something else about tonight,” Connor said. “About Daisy, actually.”

Julian flinched at the sound of her name but covered his reaction. “What about her?”

“First of all, I hated telling you what I told you on the phone.”

“There's not really a good way to break news like that,” said Julian. He'd been playing the conversation over and over in his head. Sayers had advised him to take his time digesting the news. What she'd meant was that she didn't want him to go tearing off in a rage, howling about the injustice of it all.

And if he was being honest with himself, there was a part of him that was inches from doing just that.

“I'm glad I called you first,” Julian said. “I'm glad you're my next of kin.”

Connor pulled into the driveway. “Speaking of which, have you called our mother?”

“Not yet. I've had enough drama for one day.”

“Then you'd better brace yourself,” Connor said as they got out of the truck.

Olivia flew out of the house, her aging mutt, Barkis, at her heels, and flung her arms around him. “Welcome home,” she said, her voice breaking. “Come inside. Are you hungry? I made all your favorites.”

“That's not possible,” Julian said. “Everything is my favorite.” They went inside and he greeted his little niece, Zoe. She acted shy, hugging her dad's leg and peering up at him.

“I remember you,” Julian said gently, hunkering down to her level. “You used to have a pink blanket you took everywhere.”

She nodded, offered a smile. “I colored something for you. For a present.” She scurried off to get it. Julian smiled after her. It felt so…normal, being here.

“Daisy wants to see you,” Olivia said.

He flinched. “When?”

“That's up to you.”

Best to get it over with sooner rather than later. “See if she can come over after dinner.”

 

Following the phone call from her cousin Olivia, Daisy had fixed something for supper. For the life of her, she couldn't remember what it was. She rinsed the plates, and by the time everything went down the garbage disposal, she'd forgotten what she had served.

Her mind was a million miles away. No, that wasn't quite right. Her mind was miles away, firmly entrenched at her cousin's house, where Julian waited.

“Jeremiah Butler has a gun,” Charlie announced, scooting a toy soldier along the edge of the counter.

“Is that the name of a song?” asked Logan. Before Charlie could answer, he checked his phone for an incoming text message. His hair was damp from the gym.

“It's the name of a kid,” Charlie said. “Jeez.”

“A kid who has a gun.” With lightning fingers, Logan sent a text back.

“Yeah, he got it for his birthday.” Charlie's soldier used a piece of string to rappel down the side of the cabinet. “His dad took him to the shooting gallery.”

“The…range,” Logan said. “The shooting range.”

“Can you take me to the shooting range?” Charlie crawled on his belly, commando-style, toward the family room.

“Maybe,” Logan said. “One of these days.”

“You always say that,” Charlie pointed out. “Which one of these days?”

“The one that fits our schedule.”

“Mom says you make time for what's important to you,” Charlie informed him.

Daisy put soap in the dishwasher and straightened up. “I said that?”

“Yep.”

“I'm pretty smart. However, I'm not so sure about boys shooting guns.”

“I knew you'd say that.” Charlie hunkered down and backed into the family room. “Dad.”

“One of these days,” Logan repeated.

“Tell you what,” Daisy suggested. “I'll give you an extra half hour of TV tonight because you did an awesome job cleaning your plate at dinner.”

Charlie's eyes widened. “Yes.” He scurried away before she changed her mind. Since his struggles in school had begun, she had restricted him to one hour of TV per day, so extra time was a huge bonus to him.

Logan went back to texting. She sat down across the table from him.

“I need to ask you something.”

“Okay, just a sec.” He finished his message and put down the phone. “Work stuff,” he said. “It never ends.”

“Julian's at his brother's house,” Daisy said baldly, knowing of no way to ease into the topic. “He wants to see me.”

Logan grabbed a leftover piece of bread from the basket on the table and slathered it with butter. “And?”

“And I would like to go see him.”

“When?” Logan bit off a hunk of the bread.

“Tonight. Like, in the next hour or so.” Every time she thought about the miracle that had happened, her heart nearly flew out of her chest.

Logan finished chewing and was quiet for a couple of minutes. Daisy forced herself to wait. With every fiber of her being, she wanted to bolt for the door and speed over to Olivia's house. She wouldn't, though. She was not
the only one enmeshed in this situation. So much was at stake here. There were so many ways for this miraculous occurrence to turn painful.

“We'll all go,” Logan said, his chair scraping loudly as he pushed back from the table.