Page 32 of Hard Focus
“No, I don’t think you did.” Cole dipped his chin and looked down at his hands. “It wasn’t why I came over, but”—he raised his gaze to capture hers and looked at her with a keen concentration—“damned if I didn’t find something I want.” A slow smile crept across his face, lips curving to the side to expose a deep dimple in his cheek. “You said right now.” She nodded. “Thatmeanmaybe someday?” Connie froze for a moment, then gave him a single, slow nod as he moved around the table to where she stood. He gripped the back of her chair and pulled it out from under the table. With a gentle hand, he guided her to sit, sliding the chair underneath her with surprising ease. “I can deal with someday.” Heat blazed across the nape of her neck as he shifted her hair to one side, then she felt the soft touch of his fingers against her skin. “I said it before, Connie. I can wait.”
She watched as he strode back to his chair and took his seat, fussing with his napkin for a moment. She realized he was giving her a moment to gather herself, so she took in a deep breath and then handed the serving spoon across the dish he’d made for them. “Guests first,” she said, gasping when his fingers grazed hers on the handle. It seemed every look, every touch was amplified. “It smells good.” She stared at her plate where food had appeared as if by magic. “So,” she swallowed the first bite, groaning as the flavors burst on her tongue, “good.” Her praise was rewarded by his crooked smileandhe huffed a soft laugh, flashing that dimple at her again.Holy Jesus, he’s good-looking. Returning to the safe topic of her question from earlier in the evening, she asked, “What brings you here tonight, Cole?”
“Have you met my sister?” Her head snapped upandshe stared at him. “Officially met her, I mean?”
She shook her head and swallowed. “No, I haven’t. I never did. It was…well, it was awkward, and that was before I understood what had happened.” If he could tread carefully along the edges of the event, so could she. As long as neither of them took it head-on, she hoped she could get through tonight.
“She’s the best. I’m the oldest of the four of us, and she’s next after me. It was just us two for awhile,before Mom and Dad’s tiny terrorists came along.” He smiled, and Connie watched his eyes soften, an affection for his family shining through.
“Not so tiny anymore.”
He smiled at her quip and shook his head. “Nope, they’re big boys these days. Dad’s a construction worker; Mom subbed as a teacher when she wasn’t holding down the home fort. He was always proud of her, said she was making a difference in the world. How he looked when he talked about Mom inspired me to do what I do. I wanted someone to be that proud of me.” He shrugged. “I know Audrey was the same. Fortunately for her, she got the smarts to be a nurse.Schoolwas easy for her, and she aced her boards when it came time to take them. We were all so proud of her.” He paused, and something flickered across his expression. “Are so proud of her.”
“Did she like being a nurse? Nursing? It’s called nursing, right?” He’d just forked a bite into his mouthandshe watched him chew as he nodded.
“Yeah. It was like she’d been born to it. She loved taking care of people, said it was her calling.” He sighed and stared at his plate, pushing the last couple of bites around. “She said it was all she wanted. Claimed she didn’t have a biological clock.”
“She didn’t want kids?” Connie did, in an abstract way, but it wasn’t something she was focused on now, or could see herself working towards.Maybe I like the idea of kids more than I want to have them?She shook the thought off, watching as Cole studied the tabletop.
“Nope. Told our parents years ago if they wantedgrands, they’d have to talk one of us boys into settling down.” He flicked a glance up at Connie’s face, then back down to his plate. “Then what happened, happened, and suddenly there she was in the middle of everything. Something none of us would have wished on our worst enemy, and then on top of it, the pregnancy.”
“Why did she stop nursing?” Connie laid her fork aside, all appetite gone. “Did she have trouble?”
“By the time she healed from what he did to her, she said she couldn’t stand to go back to where she worked. That’s where the ambulance took her, you know? So everyone she worked with knew every grisly detail. That’s all she could think of when she tried to go back, imagining every conversation was about her.” He shook his head. “She transferred to another hospital, but then found out she was pregnant. Seemed like everything was stacked against her. So she retreated into her house for months. Mom and me, we’d go over andsweet talkher out, take her to the store or doctor, but mostly she just wanted to stay inside. Hunker down and lick her wounds, you know?”
“That would be so hard to watch. I can’t imagine what it was like for you.”
“I can’t imagine what it was like forher. For the longesttime,I wouldn’t talk about it with her, even if she brought it up. Ithurt…that she’d been violated like that. Hurt me because I wasn’t there to stop it. Hurt me because she was my little sister, and I was supposed to be able to fix anything, you know? To protect her.” His hands rested on either side of his plate, fingers pressed against the surface firmly as if he were holding himself in place. “I wasn’t on shift the night it happened, but a buddy of mine called as soon as he realized. I met them at the ER.” He sighed heavily. “That’s not what I want to talk about, not really.”
“What then?” Connie was riveted by the pain on his face, torn between wanting to try and help him through this however shecouldor to turn away and give him privacy.
He gestured at the table. “Can I clean up? Is that more presumptuous than inviting myself to cook supper? I do better when I’m busy.”
“Sure, Cole. Whatever you need.” His eyes fixed on her face at those words and Connie chewed her lip for a moment before pushing away from the table. “I’ll help carry stuff into the kitchen.”
As they had while preparing the meal, she and Cole quickly fell into an easy rhythm as they stored and sorted leftovers from trash. So much so that she was startled when he began speaking again.
“I love my sister. That’s a fact. I love Addy, too.” He splashed water onto a plate and took a swipe at the residue with the cloth in his hand. “Did you love him? Jonas?”
“No.” Connie was glad to be able to answer that quickly and firmly, leaving no doubt. “We were dating, and I figured out quickly it was never going to be that for me. Then a couple of things happened, and I called an end.”
Cole nodded. “Did he ever seem off? When you learned what happened, were there points in time when you could look back and say, ‘there, he showed his true colors there’?”
“Only the last couple of weeks we were dating, to be honest. It was after things had started tobreak downbetween us. All of that started the weekend we took Addy to the zoo.” Cole’s cheek lifted and crinkled, showing off his dimple,andshe realized he was smiling. “What?”
“She loved going to the zoo with you.” He rinsed a glass. “She likes you a lot.”
“I like her, too. She’s easy to like, always so sweet and well-behaved.”
“What was breaking down? What happened?” Cole glanced at her. “I’m not digging for anything in particular with this. Just trying to get a sense of how a monster could hidehimselflike that and fool a smart, gorgeous woman like you.”
“I don’t feel too smart when I think about it,” she confessed, ignoring the compliment. “I’ve been wracking my brains trying to sort out what I believed and felt from what I now know. I feel like such a fool, to be honest.” She nearly didn’t continue, but the wordsleaptfree before she could stop them. “I know how fortunate I was. I don’t know why he was different with me, but it didn’t have anything to do with me as a person.”
“You were lucky, and Audrey wasn’t. Sucks to think something like that coming down to a fluke.” Tendons flexed and jumped in the back of his neck as he turned away from her, and Connie waited until he was ready to continue, the splashing of the water a soothing counterpoint to the high emotions running through the small kitchen. “You aren’t a fool, though. He hid what he was capable of. Even picking up Addy, he was different when you were there. More controlled, less antagonistic and aggressive.” Cole shook his head. “I tried to be the same every time, but he would change based on the audience.”
“He was mean at the end. That’s what made me back away, which only made him angrier. I called him on it, wouldn’t let him get away with talking to me or anyone else that way, and he…” Cole reached out and touched her wrist, the joint suddenly aching with the remembered pain of bruises long healed and faded away. Connie nodded. “Yeah. He grabbed meandI yanked free. I wasafraidbut angry, and I kept yelling until he left.”
“That was here? He came hereandgot inside?” Eyes wide, Cole stared around the kitchen and then back at Connie. “Alden said something about it.”
