Brenda Novak - Cold Feet

“We were passing out flyers together all day!”

“It’s a moot point,” he said. “Lance has a good alibi.”

“For when?”

“For Monday and Tuesday nights.” And for Wednesday and Thursday, as well, but Caleb didn’t want to go into that.

“Where was he?” she asked.

Caleb raked his fingers through his hair, wondering how to frame his answer.

“What is it?” she pressed when he didn’t respond right away. “You know something you’re not telling me.”

What the hell, he decided. The truth was the truth. “Lance is engaged to be married,” he said. “He’s been living with his fiancée and seeing Susan on the side.”

“What?” Holly scrambled to her feet. “Susan told me he was living with his sister.”

“If it makes you feel any better, his fiancée didn’t know about Susan, either. She kicked him out as soon as she learned. But she maintains that he was home by six o’clock both Monday and Tuesday nights. She works evenings and needed him to sit with her mother, who just had surgery to replace a knee. The mother confirmed that she and Lance watched television together for several hours both nights.”

“I can’t believe it,” Holly cried. “What scum! Men are all alike!”

“Hey, I never cheated on you,” he said.

“You quit loving me. That’s even worse.” Burying her face in her hands, she dissolved into tears.

Her crying tugged at Caleb’s heart, but he told himself not to feel any sympathy. He couldn’t afford sympathy. Where Holly was concerned, the softer emotions always got him into trouble. But he couldn’t stand to see her, or any woman, cry.

Leaving his beer on the counter, he went to see if he could get her to settle down. “Holly, you’ll meet someone else,” he told her.

She slipped her arms around his neck. His immediate impulse was to pull away, but she looked so crestfallen he couldn’t bring himself to do it. “Someone who’s more compatible with you than I am,” he added, patting her awkwardly. “And we’ll find Susan, okay? Don’t give up hope. Not yet. She needs us to believe.”

Holly clung to him, nestling her face into his neck. “What if we don’t find her? I’ll live my whole life never knowing what happened to my own sister. I’ve lost you already, Caleb. I can’t bear to lose her, too. She’s all I’ve got left.”

Caleb thought of the other families suffering through the same kind of loss. He didn’t relish the idea of lying to Madison Lieberman, but it seemed a small price to pay to resolve the mystery that had affected so many lives.

“I’m going to help you find Susan,” he said. “Have some faith.”

Holly shifted slightly in his arms, fitting her body more snugly to his. “If we don’t find her, you’ll eventually have to give up.”

“We’ll find her.” He got the impression she was making her body accessible on purpose, and decided he’d given her all the comfort he could.

But when he tried to release her, she held on tight.

“Caleb?”

“What?”

“Is it really over between us? Because sometimes it doesn’t feel like it is.”

It had been more than two years since he’d made love to Holly. After his second divorce, he’d gone on a brief womanizing rampage, trying to repair what his failed marriage had done to his ego, he supposed. But he’d soon found the lifestyle too empty to bother with and had thrown himself back into his work. Now it had been ten months since he’d made love to any woman.

He had to admit he was beginning to feel his body’s long neglect, but Caleb wasn’t about to make another mistake with Holly. After their first divorce, a moment’s weakness had left her pregnant and, for the baby’s sake, he’d married her again. He certainly didn’t want a repeat performance.

“It’s really over,” he said, putting her firmly away from him.

“Is there someone else?” she asked.

After tolerating Holly for so many years, Caleb suspected he wasn’t naive enough to ever fall in love again. “No.”

“You came back here to help me, even though we’re through?”

He nodded. He had come to help her, and Susan. And because of Madison, he just might get lucky enough to solve the murders that had obsessed him for years.

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