Justine Davis - Her Best Friend's Husband

Of course, even if Hope were declared legally dead, it wouldn’t resolve anything for him. He knew too well that it would always be there, hovering, that her “death” would be of legal status only, that he would be forever no closer to knowing what had really happened. No closer to knowing if she’d had an accident, or if the worse-case scenario that haunted him was true, that she’d been murdered and dumped somewhere.

But after eight years, he’d gotten better at living with that. He’d learned—

“Captain?”

He looked up from the ship’s log entry at Mark Spencer, the young first mate he’d given the wheel to earlier.

“I thought you’d gone for lunch.”

“I was, but…there’s someone here to see you, sir,” Mark said, seeming oddly nervous.

“The Waldrons?” he asked, hoping they would understand why he’d disappeared out to sea after they’d left.

“No. A…woman.”

The way he said it, as if he’d had to choose among many descriptions, alerted Gabe. Whoever it was, she’d made an impression. Hiding the first real smile he’d felt coming on since his in-laws had arrived this morning, he stood up.

“She asked for you personally, by name,” Mark added, unable to mask the curiosity in his eyes. Gabe read the speculation there, knew what the younger man was wondering; had their reclusive, loner captain been holding out on them?

Not likely, he muttered inwardly, and the smile that threatened this time was wryly self-knowing.

“She give you a name, Mark?”

“Cara. She said you’d know.”

Any urge at all to smile vanished. It seemed his painful day wasn’t over yet.

“Where did you put her?”

“The main salon.”

“Go see if she needs anything, a drink, food,” he ordered, wanting a moment alone to deal with this next surprise.

“Already done, sir.” Mark’s formal tone told him his voice had been a bit sharp.

“Good job,” he said, careful to keep his own tone even this time.

“I’m Redstone,” Mark said simply.

That got him the smile, and it was genuine. “Thanks, Mark. Please tell her I’ll be there in a moment.”

“Yes, sir.”

The young man executed a turn snappy enough to earn him approval from any Naval officer, and left the bridge.

Cara.

Gabe sank back into the raised captain’s chair for a moment. She’d have that postcard with her, he thought. She’d expect him to look at it, read it. And for a moment he wondered if he could do this, if he could rip open those old wounds once more. If he could survive it if he did.

And then he realized it didn’t matter. The wounds had never healed; the constant dig of uncertainty had kept them open and bleeding beneath the surface. There might be scars over them, but it wouldn’t take much to tear those scars away.

A postcard would do it.

Cara Thorpe, Gabe thought as he quickly finished his short log entry on the day’s cruise.

She’d not only been Hope’s best friend since elementary school, they’d been like sisters, and all the time he and Hope had been together, she’d been on the periphery, somewhere. She’d been so quiet she seemed to fade into the background, so much so that Gabe hadn’t minded much when Hope had insisted she go with them to some party, or attend a function with other people. He’d even tried to set her up with one of his buddies now and then, someone he thought might see past the quiet exterior, but something always seemed to get in the way of it actually happening.

Cara had always been bright, beneath the shyness, and she’d gone away to get her master’s degree shortly before he and Hope had married. She’d been home for the wedding, but Gabe hadn’t seen her again until after Hope had vanished. Gwen had called her then, of course, to see if she had any idea where Hope was, or if she’d heard from her. She had, in fact, had a phone message from Hope that last morning, but it wasn’t much help, only an excited promise to call her back with big news, the biggest.

The call had never come.

Cara had immediately come home to help in the search. Gabe only vaguely remembered the quiet, withdrawn young woman’s departure several weeks later; he’d been too sunk in his own misery to worry overmuch about hers.

As he rose once more and headed for the large main salon of the boat, he shouldn’t have been surprised that she’d show up now, not after being the one to receive that much-belated postcard.

Cara had likely never given up on the possibility of finding Hope alive and well. Hope had always said Cara was the most staunchly loyal person she’d ever known. That she’d often said it while pointing out how in her view that accolade didn’t apply to him was something he tried not to dwell on. Hope’s interpretation of loyalty hadn’t quite meshed with his, and certainly not with the navy’s. Which was one of the reasons, although not the main one, that he was no longer in the uniform he’d once expected to wear for life.

He slid open the large, glass door to the salon. It moved with the well-balanced, smooth silence expected on any Redstone vessel, and the woman seated with her back to him on the deeply cushioned couch upholstered in a rich, slate-gray fabric that looked like suede, didn’t turn. For a moment he stood there, staring at the back of her head as sunlight streamed in through the glass.

Had her hair always been that rich, autumn-leaves color? He remembered it as just sort of brown. Long and straight, and plain. Maybe it was the sunlight, although he’d certainly seen her in the sun before. If she’d done something more than just cut it so that it fell in soft waves just to her shoulders, it was subtle, yet made a world of difference.

And then, as if she’d sensed his presence, she stood up, turned.

And stunned him.

The quiet little mouse was gone. This was the woman who’d left Mark speechless. This was a tall, perfectly curved, vibrant, auburn-haired woman dressed in a cool, pale green that reminded him of mint ice cream. It was luscious on a hot, Southern California day.

This was a woman who looked back at him confidently with bright blue eyes that had so often avoided his before. A woman who walked toward him with an easy grace quite unlike the awkwardly tall, quiet mouse, who had always seemed to be hesitant or hasty, depending on the circumstances.

“Gabe,” she said softly as she came to a halt before him.

Had her voice always been so low and husky? Did he even know, could he even remember? She had always been so quiet, at least around him; Hope had said she talked all the time when they were alone, so he’d assumed it was just him she wasn’t comfortable around. He’d even asked her once, on one of those days so long ago, why she didn’t like him. She’d blushed furiously, said she liked him fine.

“Cara,” he said finally. “You’ve…changed.”

“Well, I should hope so,” she said with amusement. “In eight years. You, on the other hand, naval officer or not, are still tall, dark and ramrod-straight Gabriel Taggert, aren’t you?”

He didn’t smile; Hope had teased him far too much about the military carriage that had been drilled into him early on for him to take the echoed comment lightly. More than once he’d been driven beyond irritation by her insistence that he learn how to “unbend,” as if the way he stood or carried himself meant he was rigid and inflexible in mind as well.

“I’m sorry,” she said after a moment of silence. “I didn’t mean that in a bad way.”

He shrugged one shoulder. “You’re just repeating what she always said.”

“I know.” Something came into her voice then, a sort of regret. “I shouldn’t have said it. It took me a long time to realize she was really digging at you.”