Someone to Watch Over Me (18 page)

“I know,” she admitted.

“I’m doing the best I can, and I need for you to either help me or let me do it. But I can’t take arguing with you about all of it. I can’t.”

She frowned. “But…you can do anything.”

She slayed him with that and stood there blinking back tears, looking as if she could crumble at any moment, his poor, controlling sister.

“Okay,” she admitted. “I guess I know you really can’t do everything. I guess I’ve just always believed you could. That you and Mom both could.”

“And now both of us have failed you?” he said. Their mother by dying. Jax by not handling it as well as his sisters thought he should.

“I’m not being fair to you. I know that. And I just keep doing it,” she cried. “I don’t know why. I can’t seem to stop myself.”

“It’s probably easier to be mad at me than to think about how much you miss Mom.”

“Kind of,” she admitted. “But…I think the real problem is, I feel like I should be taking care of this, and I can’t. I
can’t do what you’re doing, and I feel like I’m failing everyone, too, by not being able to do this.”

Jax hugged her tightly. “You don’t have to do it, Katie. I will.”

Maybe that’s why his mother had left the job to him—because she knew he and Katie were her best bets for getting this done, and she knew it would be too much for Katie. So she gave the job to Jax.

“I’m sorry,” she said, squeezing him tight. “I’m going to stop yelling. I promise.”

“Thank you.”

She eased away from him and looked around sadly. “I know she’s not here. It just still feels like her space. I can hear her voice here. I can see her in the rooms of this house. The bathroom and the bedroom smell of her perfume and the lotion she used on her skin. I’m afraid when those things are gone, it’ll be like losing her all over again.”

“Okay.” Jax took her by the hand and tugged her along behind him. He led her into the bathroom down the hall and found their mother’s favorite perfume and handed it to Katie. “Take this.”

“All right,” she said.

“The lotion she liked is in the bedroom. Take that, too.”

“I will.”

“You’re actually going to take something from this house?” he asked.

Katie nodded sadly, and Jax grinned at her.

“Thank you. That helps a lot. How ’bout an eggbeater just loaded with family memories?”

Katie bent her head, touching her forehead to Jax’s shoulder. “I’m sorry. I’m just not ready for the eggbeater yet, but I’ll try. I promise”

“That’s my girl.” He gave her another quick hug.

“I love you, Jax.”

“I love you, too.”

A few more sniffles and a few more hugs, and Katie left. So did the Bees. Jax glanced at the clock on the wall, wanting Gwen.

She was a creature of habit, and he knew her routines. She should have been here by now. He didn’t like it that she wasn’t, didn’t like how uneasy it made him that she wasn’t here.

What am I going to do with her, Mom? I can’t keep her. It would never work. What I have to give her would never be enough to make her happy.

Romeo came trotting into the kitchen, staring oddly at Jax. Had he been talking out loud? Romeo cocked his head to the right and whined, then went to the door.

“Gwen?” Jax called out on his way to the door. He pulled it open, and there she was, getting ready to knock. “It’s about time.”

“I was busy,” she said, Romeo all over her as he greeted her.

“Romeo, what’s the matter with you? She doesn’t want to be pawed at and jumped on. Off.”

Romeo whined and tried to get outside.

“You just went,” Jax said.

“No, let him out for a minute. Remember I told you I had a surprise?”

“It’s outside?”

Gwen nodded, looking very happy with herself. She stepped back onto the deck and Romeo took off, running down the three steps to the backyard and disappearing to the right.

Jax stepped out more slowly and looked around. “Okay. Where is it?”

Romeo went, “Wooofff!” in his big, deep voice, and then something answered, something with a high-pitched, squeaky, surprised “Aaarff.”

Jax stopped where he was and said, “Gwen? What is that?”

Her grin got even bigger. “My surprise. Come and see.”

She took his hand and led him down to the yard, where, off to the right, tied to one of the posts of the deck, was…something.

Jax scowled at it, thinking this had to be a trick of the fading light. “What is it? Some kind of deranged sheep?”

“No!” Gwen yelled.

Jax took a step closer. It was either really fat or really puffy and mostly white, a little more than half the size of Romeo, and Romeo seemed leery of the thing, but excited, too. He was sniffing and keeping his distance for now. Jax didn’t blame him.

“Aaarff!” the thing said, sounding more like what he feared it was.

“I know she doesn’t look like much now, but we fished her out of a Dumpster behind Charlie’s Café. Believe me, she looks better than she did when we found her. And she has an appointment at the dog groomer’s tomorrow.”

“The dog groomer’s?” Jax repeated. “Gwen, that is not a dog.”

“Of course it’s a dog.”

“No. Romeo is a dog. He’s big and loud, and if he needed to, he could sink his teeth into a bad guy and get him to run like crazy, which is what you need. That thing…Does it even have a face?” All he saw was fur.

“Of course she has a face. She has a pretty face. Her bangs are just too long. Here. Look at her.”

Gwen pulled a hunk of fur back and there, indeed, was
what looked like two, dark eyes, a nose and a tiny mouth about the size of a cat’s.

Romeo perked up right away at that and started panting. It seemed he’d figured out it was a girl.

Jax couldn’t believe it. “That might as well be a stuffed toy for all the good it could do you. Or a giant cotton ball.”

“Stop it,” Gwen said, covering the dog’s ears with her hands.

Romeo turned to him and growled, too.

That thing she called a dog looked like it might be grinning stupidly, as if Jax had just said something nice about it.

“What’s it going to do if someone breaks in to your house?” Jax tried. “Tell a joke and hope while the guy’s laughing, you can run away?”

Gwen gaped at him. “How can you be so mean?”

Romeo growled at Jax again. Apparently, he liked the thing.

The giant cotton ball nearly purred as Gwen scratched its chest.

“I’m being practical,” Jax insisted. “You need a dog who can protect you.”

“Petunia will do that.”

“Pehh—What?”

“Her name is Petunia.”

Romeo woofed again, swished his tail back and forth and licked the thing in the face.

“Yes,” Gwen crooned and petted him. “At least
you
like her.” Then she scowled at Jax, her expression almost as annoyed as the dog’s.

“You cannot be serious,” he said, feeling his whole plan unravel. All he had to do was get rid of the stupid dog.

“She was in the Dumpster, trying to keep herself fed—”

“Gwen, it doesn’t look like she’s been missing any meals—”

“She just needs a trim. Her fur got even puffier when I blew it dry—”

“You blew the dog’s hair dry?”

“What’s wrong with that? She was all wet, and I didn’t want her to catch cold.”

“She’s a dog!”

“I thought you said she wasn’t a dog?” Gwen reminded him.

“I did. You know what I mean.”

“No, I don’t. She was lost and trying to take care of herself as best she could, and someone had dumped vegetable cuttings on her and garbage, and I found her, and Joanie and I cleaned her up. She doesn’t have a collar or a tag, and no one seems to be looking for her. And she’s sweet—”

“You don’t need sweet—”

“Yes, I do. She’s funny and silly and happy and sweet, and I need all that in my life. I need it a lot.”

“You need a watchdog more,” Jax said.

“I’ve been just fine without a watchdog for nearly a year now.”

“Gwen, you said you wanted to feel safe, remember?”

“Yes. I feel safe with you.”

Jax took it like a hundred-pound weight had just landed on his chest. Landed hard. Life was really hard. It had taught him that, if it had taught him nothing else.

“What if I’m not around?”

“Tired of me already?” she asked. “Or just scared?”

“I’m not scared,” he lied, knowing it for the lie it was the moment he said it. But he still didn’t take it back. He stood there and tried to look like he’d meant every word
and like he wasn’t about to break her heart, something he’d sworn he’d never do.

“Decided I’m just too much trouble after all?” she suggested, giving him another out if he wanted it.

“No,” he said, leaving himself nowhere to go, at least not that he saw.

“Then what’s the problem?”

“The dog,” he said. “Both of them.”

Gwen looked down at her feet. The fur ball she claimed was a dog was sitting there, happily wagging its cotton-ball tail while Romeo licked its hair-covered face, like he was either admiring it or trying to give it a bath.
Stupid dog.

“They look perfectly happy to me,” Gwen said. “You’re the only one who seems to be having a problem, Jax. What’s the problem?”

“I just thought…It seemed like the perfect answer…”

“What did?”

“That you’d take the dog.”

“I did take the dog. She’s right here.”

“Not that. Not her. That you’d take Romeo.” He just blurted it out. “I thought you’d take Romeo.”

G
wen gaped at him. “All this time you were with me because you thought I’d take Romeo off your hands?”

“Why not?” he said. “It makes perfect sense. You like him. You fuss over him the way my mother did. He likes you, and he gets stupid sometimes, but he’s big and he’s trained to protect people. If anyone ever tried to break in to your house, Romeo would handle it.”

“That’s what all this has been? You trying to get rid of your poor mother’s dog?”

“All what?”

“You know what, Jackson Cassidy, you rat. Don’t stand here and act like nothing happened. Like you didn’t do anything to make me think something was happening between us, and if I think there was, I must be crazy. Don’t you dare try that with me.”

“Gwen, I—”

“You swore you didn’t lie to women. Don’t start now.”

“I’m not lying,” he claimed, dog that he was.

“I helped you, didn’t I?”

“Of course you did.”

“I mean, I haven’t let a lot of people lean on me. I usually do the leaning. So I can’t be sure…But I thought I was doing that for you, and I thought it was important.”

“You were. It was.”

“I held on to you when you were so mad and so sad your whole body was trembling. I listened to everything you had to say, didn’t I?”

“Yes.”

“And I cleaned and sorted boxes full of a really sweet, dead woman’s stuff—”

“And I’m grateful for that.

“But you expect me to believe that all that time all you really wanted was for me to take your mother’s dog off your hands? So you can get on with dismantling your mother’s life and go back to the lousy life you had before she died? Is that what you’re claiming you want?”

“There was nothing lousy about my life before,” he told her.

“Oh, right. Nothing like finding a new girl every few months or so. Never getting too attached to them. Never risking anything like love. You were doing just fine.”

“I was,” he said.

“Liar.”

“Gwen—”

“Coward.”

“I never wanted to hurt you,” he tried.

“Well, I want to hurt you. Right now. I want to grab you and shake some sense into you and make you be honest with yourself and with me. I wish I was the kind of woman who could scream at you and hurt you and then just walk away, but I can’t do that. Because I don’t believe you for one second when you say this was all about me taking that dog.”

“It wasn’t. Not really. It was just…in the beginning. That was all. The beginning.”

“And then what?” she asked.

“And then things got all complicated, and I shouldn’t have let it. I mean, I told you, Gwen. I told you it wouldn’t last. You know it won’t.”

“No, I don’t know that,” she said. “I know it won’t last unless some things inside you change in a very fundamental way—”

“Oh, yeah. Just like a woman. Always wanting to change a man.”

“No, I don’t. I never cared enough about any man before to want to change him.”

“But you want to change me?”

“You need to change, Jax. You need to change the way you think about life and about love. About faith and about God.”

“I don’t have any faith left, and I don’t believe in a God who’d take so much away from me.”

“You believe in your mother and that she still exists somewhere. You believe she’s helping you in some way. You told me so yourself.”

“Yeah, well. What does that mean? I felt like I could talk to my father, too, after he died.”

“And you got through it. You’ve gotten through everything life’s ever thrown at you. You’ll get through this, too.”

“I am getting through it.”

“By getting rid of me? By pushing everyone away from you? That’s not living, Jax.”

“I’m getting through it the best way I know how.”

“Well, it’s time you found a better way,” Gwen said.
“You need to think about what’s important. What means something. What lasts.”

“Nothing lasts,” he said.

“Jax, your mother’s still here. Everything you feel for her. All the love she has for you—it hasn’t gone anywhere. All the memories you have of her. Everything she’s taught you. None of that ends. She’s still helping you, even now. You know that. You’re just afraid to admit it to yourself.”

“Fine,” he said. “I’m a coward. I won’t argue that with you.”

“I didn’t mean it. I was just angry. I wanted to hurt you, and I’m sorry for that. But I’m not trying to hurt you now. I’m trying to help.”

“By wanting me to love you? To try to build a life with you? How is that going to help?” he cried. “I already told you—it won’t last. Nothing does.”

“So you’re never going to let anyone else be important to you, except your sisters? And why is that? Why is it okay to love your sisters?”

“How could I not? They’re my sisters.”

“A lot of people manage not to love their siblings at all. So that can’t be the reason, although I think I know what it is.”

“Fine,” he said. “Tell me why I love my sisters.”

“Because it was too late. By the time life started teaching you not to let anyone get too close and that nothing really lasts—not even love—you were eleven, and you already loved them too much to ever pull away from them.”

Jax didn’t like hearing that at all. He didn’t think it was true, but all the same, he hated hearing it. It made it hard for him to breathe.

“You must be terrified of losing them, too,” Gwen said.

He took that like a kick in the chest. “Don’t say that.”

“It’s true. You’ll lose them one day, or they’ll lose you—”

“And this is supposed to be helping me?”

“I’m just saying that you can’t wall yourself off from life. You can try all you want to protect yourself, and bad things still get to you. Do you think you’re safer by only loving three people than you could be by loving four? Is that the way you think it works?”

“I have no idea how anything works,” he confessed.

“You should come spend the day with me at the flower shop. I think you can learn everything you need to know about life in a flower shop. To think, I just took the job because it’s the first one I heard of when I moved here, and it turned out to be exactly what I needed. There’s so much pain in the world and so much joy, and it all comes through the shop. New babies. Weddings. Anniversaries. Celebrations. Love. Illness. Funerals. It’s all there. Everybody gets all of those in their lives, day after day, Jax, don’t you see that?

“I see that the bad outweighs the good by a long shot.”

“That’s not true.”

“It is for me.”

“Your mother knew better. She would have known what to say—”

“Gwen, the truth is…” That he couldn’t hide from it anymore. There was nowhere left to hide. Life was just too lousy. “The truth is that I was a disappointment to my mother.”

“No.”

“She told me so. It was the last thing she said to me. That she was disappointed in me and the way I was living my life.”

“She didn’t mean it. She couldn’t have….”

“Oh, yeah,” he said bitterly. “She did.”

“Jax—”

“No,” he said sharply enough that she flinched. He backed up, took a breath and said, “I’m sorry. She said it, okay? She said it. And that’s something I never wanted another living soul to hear, but…There it is. That’s how she felt, and if I disappointed her…Well, I’d say I’m bound to disappoint everybody who ever gets close to me.”

“I know that’s not true.”

“Gwen, please just stop—”

“I can’t. Because I think this is your big chance. People do change. They grow and they learn, and they change. You can do that, and if you do, we can be together.”

“We can’t,” he insisted.

“We can. I think you want that. More than that, I think you need it. I think you need me, maybe even more than I need you. And I think we’re here together, in this moment, with these things that are going on in your life and mine, because right now is your big chance.”

“A chance for what?”

“For you to figure out some things. For your life to get better. Right now. You just have to stop being so afraid, and you have to think with your heart instead of your head. Ask yourself what you believe in your heart. Not what your head tells you is true, but what your heart tells you is possible. What’s real?”

“I know what’s real.”

“You and I together—that’s real. Your mother trying to help you? That’s real, too. God is helping us both even now. That’s real. All those feelings inside you that are telling you you’re tired of being alone and scared and angry, and the need you have to love someone, someone who will stand beside you through the really bad times and the good ones—those feelings are real. They’re already inside of you. You
don’t have to go looking for them. You don’t need some brilliant bit of illumination or to twist yourself into a whole different person or anything like that. You just have to accept what you already know, deep down in your heart. You’re a good person, and you know how to love people. You know how important it is to have people you love in your life. You just have to let me be one of those people.”

“No—”

“I love you, Jax. I think you love me, too. And it scares me, but I need it. I need you. And I think you need me, and I think this is what you want. Please don’t run away from this just because you’re scared or because you’ve been knocked around by life one too many times and it hurt so bad you could hardly stand it.”

“I can’t stand it,” he said. “I can’t lose anyone else I love.”

“I hope you can,” she said. “Because you’re about to lose me.”

And then she untied her dog’s leash, turned and walked away, poor little Petunia following after her.

Jax stood there like a statue.

Romeo barked like a fool and then started whining and jumping up and down, as if this was disaster in the making.

Take it like a man, Romeo.

Of course he didn’t. He was a dog, and he didn’t know better than to fall madly and completely in love.

Stupid dog.

Gwen had said Jax was scared to love the dog. He didn’t love the dog. The dog made him crazy. His mother hadn’t known what she was talking about when she’d claimed the dog and Jax were alike in so many ways.

Look at the fool thing now, running off to chase Gwen and that silly white powder puff, then turning and running
back to Jax. He had to feel sorry for the dog. Back and forth he went, more agitated each time he did it.

Jax stood there and felt like he was dying.

Yeah, he was so much better off than the dog.

Then Gwen turned around and marched back to him, both dogs following her. He braced himself as best he could and thought of his boast about not loving her, about not being able to stand to lose one more person he loved. If he didn’t love her, why did it feel like he was dying?

“Did you mean it about me taking Romeo?” she asked.

“What?” She’d come back to talk about the dog?

“Is that what you really want? For me to take your mother’s dog? Because if you’re never going to let yourself love him, he’d be better off with me.”

That’s what she was thinking about as she’d walked away from him?
The dog?

“Fine,” she said. “Give him to me.”

Jax gaped at her.

He couldn’t believe she’d come back for the dog.

“Fine. Romeo, go with Gwen.”

Romeo grinned like a fool and ran to her side, licking what looked like the cotton ball’s ear.

“Come on, you two,” Gwen said as she turned and walked away from him once again.

Gwen got home and sat on her couch, intending to feel very sorry for herself and maybe even cry. But Petunia seemed quite concerned about Gwen. She climbed into her lap, whimpering and looking worried and trying to help. Romeo sat on the floor beside them both, whimpering and looking worried, too. It was so sweet.

“It’s okay,” Gwen said, not convincing either of them that it was. “I’ll be okay. Really.”

She hugged Petunia to her chest and then leaned over and kissed Romeo’s pretty head. It wasn’t like she was going to fall apart. Not the way she had after the attack. She was stronger now, and she had two, beautiful, kindhearted dogs to comfort her.

Romeo hopped up onto the couch and then plopped down against her, his warm, furry side pressed against her leg. He moaned like a man who’d had a hard day, and then put his head on her knee and looked at her with big, sad eyes. Petunia wriggled her little mess of a tail and licked Gwen in the face.

Gwen tried not to think about where the dog’s mouth had been and to take it as the gesture of comfort she was sure Petunia meant it to be.

“Tomorrow we get you a toothbrush,” she said, and held the little dog tighter.

Okay, if she wasn’t going to fall apart, what was she going to do? Visit Amy in the hospital. She’d promised that she would. And a nice lady from the Victims’ Rights Council had called Gwen about volunteering with the organization. They’d sent someone to call on Amy, and she’d mentioned Gwen’s visit, and the group thought Gwen would be great at calling on other people who’d been attacked and whose lives were a mess. She had a little experience, and it seems she was in demand.

So she’d do that, too. No one should have to feel alone after going through something like being attacked, and there was something very powerful about having someone tell you that you were going to get through it. That they knew because they’d been exactly where you’d been.

At least, that’s what the victims’ rights lady had told Gwen, and it sounded true to her.

So Gwen would make pretty bunches of flowers for people to celebrate all the different, wonderful days of
their lives and to brighten up their last days. She’d take care of her dogs, fix up her house and do some volunteer work for the victims’ rights group and go back to her nice church, full of kind, loving people, and thank God for all she had in her life that was good, and she’d be okay.

She’d probably spend some time waiting for Jax to come to his senses, hoping that he would, but that probably couldn’t be helped.

Later that night, when she tried to say a little prayer to help her through this, all she could manage was to think of Jax and whisper miserably, “I thought I had it all figured out.”