She reached for a little container of half-and-half and poured it into hers. Then she added a second for safety’s sake. No telling how her stomach would react to the assault of Maude’s strong coffee at this time of night, especially when she was feeling wound as tight as a spring.
Her hand was shaking, and Jake took the second creamer from her hand and poured it for her.
“Look,” he said as he dropped the container on the saucer, “I know you have plenty of reasons to hate me. Hate this whole town, I guess, but most especially those of us you grew up with. We were merciless. But we’re not kids any longer, Nora. And most folks think you got a hell of a raw deal.”
“Thanks,” she said shortly.
From the corner of her eye, she saw him tilt his head. She didn’t want to look at him, didn’t want to feel again the impact of his good looks.
He sighed audibly. “All I’m trying to say is that you may find folks here are easier to get along with than it must have seemed to you back in our school days.”
“Really.” She tried to keep the tone noncommittal, even though she wanted to ask him what made him think she wanted to get along with anyone in this town. Funny how painful even the oldest scars could become when faced directly with their source again. In just this short period of time, her distant past had reared up to claw at her nearly as strongly as her recent past.
But then, it all came down to the same source, didn’t it? Everything bad that had happened to her, far past and near past, had happened because she was different. Cursed, as her dad had said more than once.
Jake sighed. Apparently the tone hadn’t been as noncommittal as she had hoped.
“You’ve been hurt,” he said finally. “Badly. And I get as much blame as anyone. I’m sorry.”
She glanced at him then and wished she hadn’t, because with that one look she remembered something she hadn’t allowed herself to think about in more than a decade: Jake had been one of the few kids she had grown up with who hadn’t picked on her throughout her childhood. In the end he had proved to be no better. But for many years he had refrained from the name-calling, the nasty pranks, the ugliness that had framed her days. Not until the very end had she realized that he’d thought the same hideous things about her.
She said nothing, because she wasn’t going to ease his conscience and accept his apology. After what she had been through, apologies seemed like empty words.
“Nora.”
Her gazed skipped back to him, then away.
“Nora,” he said again. “What would you think of me if we didn’t have a past? If we were meeting for the first time?”
“I’d hate you,” she said flatly. “I’d hate you just because you’re a cop.”
* * *
Jake supposed he deserved that. Even without all that had happened to her in the past months, he would have deserved that. But leaving the past out of it, given what she had endured from the police in Minneapolis, he could well understand her reaction.
He left her alone and began to eat his pie, trying to think his way through this, something he should have done before impulsively picking her up and bringing her here.
He’d been a bastard twelve years ago. He knew that. He could still cringe inwardly in shame at the way he had thrown all those epithets she’d been hearing for years in her face when she’d been utterly vulnerable, counting on him, at least, to be a friend. He still didn’t know exactly what had possessed him to be so cruel, but who could understand the mind of a twenty-year-old male anyway? Not even the male involved, evidently. There was more than one stupid act in his youth, although his treatment of Nora probably topped the list.
He ate another mouthful of pie, hardly tasting it, wondering what he could say to start building a bridge he never should have destroyed in the first place. It was clear she didn’t even want to hear an apology.
Finally he said the only thing he could think of. “I wouldn’t have suspected you.”
Her face lifted and she looked straight at him. He felt a pang as he once again saw how thin and pale she had become, how worn she looked. Even her beautiful blond hair seemed to be on the brink of death. He didn’t know, might never know, all that had been done to her.
“Really?” she asked, her voice brittle. “Even my defense attorney wouldn’t agree with you.”
His head jerked a bit, as if she had slapped him. “What do you mean?”
“He agreed with the cops. I’d worked with the guy’s kid, so I must have known him. Must have had an affair with him. Must have tried to conceal his identity to hide the affair. Must have obstructed justice. Never mind that I never met him, only his wife.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Sure. Everyone was sorry afterward. But that didn’t get my job back. It didn’t protect me from the endless hounding of the press. It didn’t spare me from people who believed that simply because I was arrested I must be involved somehow. Do you have any idea how that felt?”
“I can’t begin to imagine.” And he honestly couldn’t, although he was trying.
“So they finally let me out, and the D.A. said something to the press about how they had proved unequivocally I was in no way involved with the man before the attack. People avoided me like the plague for all of a week, and then the media were all over me all over again, demanding to know my relationship with the man, what I’d done to make him so mad at me and then...and then...” She stopped, breathing hard, her voice breaking.
“And then he threatened you.”
She looked down, her long hair veiling her face. “Don’t go there,” she whispered. “Don’t go there.”
“You should have had protection.”
“Well, I didn’t. He was an upstanding member of the community, no flight risk... Yeah, I heard it all. Even I didn’t think he’d be stupid enough to make those threats.”
He wanted to reach across the table and take her trembling hands, wanted to promise her a safety no one could promise her.
But before he could say or do anything, she pushed herself out of the booth. “I’m going home. Now.”
Home. The place that had been part of her misery when she had been growing up her. To a dad who had been less than a dad. A dad who had treated her as harshly as her schoolmates.
Maude caught his eye and he saw a frown there as Nora hurried toward the door. Okay, he’d been stupid again, and Maude had heard it all.
Jake hurriedly tossed bills on the table, then followed Nora into the night.
“Wait,” he called after her. “Wait. I said I’d take you home.”
“I don’t want anything from you. Nothing!”
From the looks of her, he doubted she had the energy to keep up that pace, and certainly not for three blocks. Hopping into his cruiser, he did the only thing he could: he followed her.
She didn’t even glance over at him as he drove beside her. She made it to the next street and started up the gentle slope toward her father’s house. Just a couple more blocks.
But she didn’t make it. The small hill defeated her. Her steps slowed, and then she stumbled. He threw the car into Park and climbed out, rushing to her side.
It wasn’t just weakness that was giving her problems, he realized, but the anger, as well. She was gasping as if she’d just run a marathon.
She had enough strength to glare at him, though. He didn’t care. This time he was going to do something right.
Without even asking, he scooped