Mercy Read online

  The truth was that Cameron MacDonald did not know Allie Gordon existed for most of the time they had lived in the same town. She was far too quiet, too plain to attract his attention. There was only one incident in high school where Cam had ever truly come in contact with her: during a blood drive, they had been lying beside each other on Che donor tables, and when she sat up and hopped from the stretcher to get her promised juice and cookies, the world spun and went black. She awakened in Cam's arms; he'd jumped off his own table to catch her as she fell, unintentionally ripping the intravenous from the crook of his elbow so that when Allie went home that afternoon, she realized that Cam's blood spotted the back of her blouse.

  Allie had trouble convincing herself that the reason they had gotten married years later did not have to do with the fact that after college, they were two of the few who had come back to Wheelock. Cam had returned because it was expected of him, Allie because there was nowhere else she really wanted to be.

  If she stood on the bottom ledge of the refrigeration unit for the fresh flowers and craned her neck in a certain way out the window, she could see Cam's office at the police station, even make out his shadowy form hunched over his desk. It was the reason she'd chosen Rhys particular real estate space when she opened the flower shop eight years ago.

  She saw that he was in, not out on patrol, and decided now was as good a time as any to bring him his arrangement and tell him about Verona. She crawled down from the ledge, rubbing her hands against her knees to warm them up, and closed the sliding glass door of the cooler. Absently, she ran her fingers over the sweet chestnut and barberry foliage that made up the greens in the piece she would bring over to Cam.

  Allie knew the language of flowers--the idea that every bloom stands for some quality of human nature. Bouquets sent from the shop for the arrival of a baby were stuffed with daisies, for innocence, and moss, for maternal love. Valentine's arrangements had roses, of course, but also lilies for purity, heliotrope for devotion, and forget-me-nots for true love. To Cam, she often sent designs that were full of messages she knew he could nor understand. She eyed her barest work critically, nodding over the tulips which made up the bulk of the piece. In Persia, a man would give a tulip to his betrothed to show that as red as the flower was, he was on fire with love; as black as its center, his heart was smoldering like a coal.

  She filled out the vase with Michaelmas daisies, China asters, and fire thorn. And then, as she always did for Cam's arrangements, she added as many sprigs of purple clover as she could without making the lines of the flowers seem overblown. Clover, which simply meant, Think of me.

  When she walked out the door to take the flowers to Cam, she did not bother to lock it. Very few people would try to rob the wife of the Wheelock police chief.

  Hannah was on the telephone when she walked through the door of the police station, but waved her toward Cam's closed office door to tell her he wasn't in a meeting. "No," she was saying firmly. "We don't use psychics, but thank you."

  Allie set the tall vase in the center of the main desk, where bookings were done, and then walked to Cameron's office. She gave a quick knock and pushed the door open with her shoulder before Cam could tell her to come in. He was asleep, his head pillowed on his arms on top of his desk.

  Smiling, Allie crept around behind his chair, running her fingers through the hair at the back of his neck. She bent close to his ear to whisper. "While justice sleeps," she teased.

  Cameron came awake with a start, snapping his head up so abruptly he clipped Allies chin. Allie staggered back, seeing black for a moment, until Cam grabbed her and pulled her down onto his lap. "Jesus, Allie," he said. "You scared the hell out of me." Allie rubbed her jaw, testing it gingerly by setting her teeth. Cam's fingers came up to brush her throat. "You okay?"

  Allie smiled. "I brought you your flowers."

  Cam rubbed his hand down his face. "I told you you don't have to do that."

  "I like to."

  Cam snorted. "This is a police station, not a hotel lobby," he pointed out. "People who are arrested aren't much interested in interior design. They don't even notice."

  "But you do," Allie pressed.

  Cam looked up at her wide brown eyes; her hands, gripping each other. "Sure," he said softly. "Sure I do."

  He glanced out the open doorway to the front desk where Allies latest arrangement stood. She was an artist; he told her that often. The mixtures of reds and blues, of stark lines and soft curves, and the overall whimsy of her floral designs gave her creations a comfort and an ease that did not exist in Allie herself. Once he had peeked at her personal journal when she was at work, hoping to find a layer to his wife that she didn't have the courage to reveal. But there had been no racy thoughts or dreamy recollections, just a review of how she had acted and what she had said to Cam, and then notes on what she might have done differently.

  Sometimes he woke up in the middle of the night, sweating, worried that after years of marriage to Allie he, too, would wind up editing his life, instead of simply living it.

  "Guess who came into the store today." Allie moved off his lap to sit on the corner of Che desk, swinging one leg.

  "Am I supposed to go through everyone in the town?" Cam asked.

  "Verona MacBean." Allie frowned. "Well, I don't know if it's MacBean anymore, but she's here, all the same. She's a famous writer now. They're doing some hotshot lunch for her at the library."

  "Verona MacBean," Cam said, grinning. He tipped his chair onto its two rear legs. "Good old Verona MacBean."

  "Oh, cut it out," Allie said, lightly kicking him in the leg. "She's pinched and pruny and her boobs don't look nearly as big now as they did when she was sixteen."

  "Probably grew into them."

  Allie picked up a catalog and whipped it at Cam's head. A glossy travel magazine fell onto the desk between them. Her eyes widened at the white spray of beach and the weaving red sloop splayed across the front cover. She picked it up and curiously thumbed through it. "Well, at least it's not Playboy," she said. She skimmed a list of all-inclusive resorts, and peered closer at an advertisement depicting a tastefully nude sunbather.

  Cam reached across the desk and plucked the magazine out of Allies hand. His face felt hot, his collar too tight; he didn't want Allie to know what he spent his time daydreaming about.

  Allie raised her eyebrows as a blush crept across Cameron's face. "I'll be damned," she said. "You're trying to keep a secret." She leaned close to Cam. "Not that it's up to me or anything, but I'd rather go sailing than skiing." She hesitantly moved forward an inch, keeping her eyes open, and touched her lips to Cam's.

  For a moment, Cam let her breath brush his mouth and then he kissed her quickly and pushed her back. "Not here," he murmured.

  "Then where?" Allie whispered, before she could stop herself.

  They both looked away, remembering the previous night. Allies hands had stolen across the bed, slipping under the blue T-shirt he was wearing, moving in quiet circles. That was her invitation. And Cam had simply turned toward her, his eyes setting a distance, his fingers staying her own.

  "Oh," she had said, her hand dropping away.

  "It's not you," he'd explained. "I'm just exhausted."

  Allie wondered where the myth that men wanted to make love more than women came from, since in her experience it was always the other way around. She did not like being less beautiful than her husband, or being the one who always made an advance. Sometimes Cam did not even bother to tell her he was tired. Sometimes he simply pretended to be asleep.

  She questioned if it might have been different if she were a classic beauty, or if she were sexy. She told herself that she'd lose ten pounds and cut her hair and mold herself into someone irresistible, and then when Cam came grabbing for her she'd simply turn away.

  Maybe she'd find someone else.

  And then she'd laugh at the very thought of letting anyone touch her the way Cameron MacDonald had.

  As if she had