“This is Jane Clark?” She hated the way her voice rose at the end like a question. Like her identity was suddenly in doubt.Jane Tillett. “You called me?”
“Hey, Ms. Clark. Can I have your password, please?”
“My password.” Her mind blanked. What was her password? “Cupcakes. Is there a problem at the bakery?”
“Thank you. Don’t worry, everything’s fine.”
She could barely hear him, she couldn’t think, over the water rushing in the sink and the pounding in her head. She shut off the faucet.
“... false alarm,” he was saying. “But since she didn’t have the code and we couldn’t reach you, we had to notify the police.”
“The police.” Thank God her father wasn’t on duty tonight.
“Yes, ma’am.”
There was more, but in her relief, she hardly cared. Something about resetting the alarm and a nuisance charge because Jack Rossi had to respond to the call. She missed some details because her father chose that moment to walk into the kitchen.
“Yes, yes, I understand,” she answered distractedly as he opened the refrigerator and pulled out the pitcher of water. “Thank you. I will. Good night.”
She disconnected the call.
Hank stood watching her, clutching his glass. “That the security company?”
She pulled herself together. Of course he would have heard her mention the police. At fifty-eight, there was nothing wrong with his hearing. Or his understanding. “Yes. Lauren—my new hire?—went back to the shop to get her laptop and set off the alarm by accident.”
His deep brown eyes remained fixed on her face. “So everything’s all right, then.”
For one wild moment she was tempted to tell him everything, to throw her fears and troubles on her father’s broad chest and beg him to take care of her.
But he’d already done so much, taking them in after the wreck of her marriage. She’d already let him down so badly. Let herself down.
She couldn’t ask him to do more.
She found a smile somewhere and pasted it on. “Everything’s fine.”
He nodded, accepting her assurance as he always did, relieved to be spared the necessity of dealing with her feelings. She listened to his footsteps in the hall, waiting until she was sure he was settled in his recliner before she checked her phone again.
CALLERUNKNOWN. A wrong number, maybe. Yet a whisper ran like a spider over her nape, all the little hairs rising in its wake, stirred by the call from the security company, teased by an instinct. Something left over from her marriage, like the queen-sized sheets or the scar on the back of her head.
Travis. She felt it in her bones, a remembered ache. If she ignored him, would he call again? And again. Or maybe he wouldn’t call. Maybe he’d drop by at the bakery, at her house.You want to have this discussion in front of Aidan and your daddy? Or we settle things now.
He picked up after the first ring. She recognized his voice, a sense of inevitability sinking her stomach.
“Janey, Janey.” His drawl was reproachful. Familiar. “Took you long enough to get back to me.”
She resisted the urge to apologize. She grabbed the trash bag from the kitchen garbage can, carrying it outside, where there was no risk her father would overhear her call. “What do you want, Travis?”
“Maybe I just want to see my wife. My family.”
Standing by the Dumpster, she let the trash bag slide to her feet; clutched the phone tighter. “I thought you were on your way to Florida. You had a job, you said.”
“Yeah, about that...” A pause, while she felt sicker and sicker to her stomach. “I need some traveling money to get down there.”
“I gave you money already.”
“Enough to get on. Not enough to get gone.”
“It’s all I can afford.”
