The Street Where She Lives Read online

  Enjoying herself, Emily leaned back in the bed next to Ben. She crossed her bunny-slippered feet and slipped an arm around his shoulders, surveying her squirming mother. “Okay. So he sleepwalks. And even though you sleep with one eye open, he somehow managed to get in under the covers without your knowledge, is that it?”

  “Well…” Rachel glared at Ben. Help me, her eyes demanded.

  When Ben left this time he wanted it to be on good terms, and he didn’t plan on thirteen years going by before he made his way back into this very bed. In light of that, he smiled. “How ’bout this, Em…it’s none of your business why I’m in here. We’re the adults, you’re the kid, and from now on, you’ll knock before you barge in.”

  Em’s mouth opened, then shut.

  “Starting five minutes ago,” he added.

  “You mean…”

  “Exactly. Start this episode over.”

  “You want me to, like, actually go back out?”

  “Like, actually, yes.”

  Emily stared at her mom, who was looking as though she liked that idea very much. “You heard your father,” Rachel said primly.

  Emily let out a rude noise, but got up. Halfway to the door she turned back. “You know, this having two parents in the same house is bogus.”

  “Knock,” was all he said.

  She slammed the door behind her, and Rachel lifted a brow at him. She looked good first thing in the morning, he noted, with her short, short, out-of-control hair and her cheeks quite pink…wearing that robe he’d so eagerly peeled off her last night.

  Emily’s knock came, and he regretted he hadn’t sent her farther away…like into town.

  “Aren’t you going to tell her to come in?” Rachel asked.

  “I still haven’t worked out a good reason for being in your bed.”

  “Maybe you should have left it by now,” she pointed out.

  “Yeah.” As if he didn’t know that. With regret, he tossed the covers off and stood. Where had he left his clothes…? Ah, he saw them now, littered across the floor.

  Another knock. “Dad? Mom?”

  Rachel was staring at his very naked body, her mouth open a little as if she couldn’t quite get enough air. “Hold on, Em!”

  Picking up his jeans from the floor, Ben slid into them. His shirt was across the room, draped over the top of her dresser where it had landed in his hasty strip.

  Another knock, more loudly now. “Dad?”

  “Em, we need another minute here.” He didn’t take his eyes off what he’d found beneath the shirt. An opened artist’s pad displaying a beautiful colored pencil rendering of nighttime South Village. The lights, the people, the shops and theater…it was all there, and in such vivid clarity and detail it could have been a photograph. Mesmerized, he turned the page, and the next picture caught him by the heart and squeezed.

  It was of Emily, Patches and himself, all sitting on the small patch of grass in front of the house, laughing, touching…so absolutely, stunningly real he could almost see Emily breathing, could almost hear the puppy barking. “My God, Rachel.”

  “Those are personal.”

  “They’re incredible.”

  She shut the pad on his fingers.

  “I thought you weren’t able to work. That you were struggling.”

  “Do those look like Gracie columns to you?”

  “So it’s not Gracie, they’re still amazing.”

  “You can’t make a living off renderings, Ben.”

  “You can do whatever you want to do, you damn well know that.”

  “It’s not that easy.”

  “Of course it is.”

  “Look, ever since the accident, I need my job to be…important. And it’s not,” she finished lamely.

  “Yes, it is. People wait all week for your witty take on whatever is going on in the country.”

  Rachel laughed. “Right.”

  “They do.”

  “Ben…I look at you and your work, and then turn back to my easel and…” Her face fell. “It just feels insignificant. Silly.”

  What was she saying? That she wanted to do what he did? That she suddenly wanted to travel with him? No, that was his fantasy and his alone. “Listen to me.” He took her shoulders, made her look at him. “My work…it’s not for normal people, okay? You know that. I travel all the time, I have no home, nothing to call my own except my equipment. I go to countries people have never heard of and see stuff no one could put together in their worst nightmares, and—”

  “Exactly!” She shoved free. “You want to fix the world, Ben, and you’re not afraid to do it.”

  “You do, too, just in a different way, that’s all.” He softened his voice, stroked a hand over her hair. “Don’t doubt yourself because of me, babe. I don’t think I could stand that. You are who you are, a damn strong, beautiful, intelligent woman, with the sense to keep her feet firmly planted. Me…I’m missing that gene entirely. What I do…that’s all I know.”

  She lifted her gaze to his, and must have seen some of his thoughts, because resignation came into her eyes. “Last night…was that goodbye?”

  Emily knocked again. “Hey! Can I come in or what?”

  Ben couldn’t take his eyes off Rachel, the woman he’d seen in the face of every woman he’d been with in all these years. The woman who’d given him Emily. The one woman who, if he were crazy enough to consider settling down, would be the one to make him want to do it.

  Too bad he was missing that gene, too. “Yeah. That was goodbye.”

  She stared at him, still a little dewy-eyed, and he felt his heart crack. “It has to be,” he whispered back.

  She nodded, and went into the bathroom.

  A FEW HOURS LATER, Agent Brewer called Ben. “We’ve got news.”

  Ben sat down, gripped the phone. “Tell me you have Asada in your hot little custody.”

  “Not our custody. The South American authorities claim to have him.”

  “Claim?”

  “They say he was found dead in his hometown village.”

  “Are they sure?”

  “They think so.”

  “And what do you think?”

  “I’d like it better if we’d been able to ID the body before they cremated him.”

  Shit. Ben rubbed his eyes. “No one from the States IDed him first?”

  “No, but he was reportedly identified by a handful of people who have known and hated him for years.”

  “So…it’s over.”

  “It’s over.”

  Ben hung up the phone, then waited for the relief to overwhelm him.

  But oddly enough, the relief never came.

  From: Emily Wellers

  To: Alicia Jones

  Subject: Sucky days…

  Alicia, my dad is leaving on Tuesday for Africa. I know I told you he was going to stay, that’s what I had hoped for, but it’s okay. I think he and my mom got close on this trip, and I’m going to make sure there’s more trips in the near future.

  Emily stopped typing and sat back. What else could she say? She felt bad because Alicia had gotten lonely in the past few weeks when she’d been so busy. But the truth was, suddenly Emily didn’t feel like doing e-mail every single day.

  Before my dad goes, we’re taking a short camping trip over the weekend. Summer is almost here and Dad says we’re celebrating the upcoming season. He even talked Mom into coming. Can you believe it? The homebody out on an overnight camping trip. Shockers. She must really like him to agree, don’t you think?

  Emily grinned. She thought about how her mother had looked just that morning while staring at her father in her bed, as if not quite sure exactly how he’d gotten there. Oh yeah, things were heating up.

  Anyway, I know you wanted us to meet tomorrow but it’ll have to be next week, okay? I still haven’t asked my mom, she thinks there’s only psychos on the net. I’ll start easing her into it today.

  Emily

  THEY WERE ON their way to Joshua Tree National