Her Best Friend's Husband

She removed something from a side pocket of the purse and held it out to him, thankfully unaware of the misfire of his imagination.

“Obviously, this is why I’m here.”

It was the postcard, he realized. And caught himself looking at it much as if it were a venomous snake he’d stumbled onto.

He couldn’t face it, not yet. So he looked at her hands instead. Long, slim fingers, neat, not-too-long nails finished with a subtle shine that spoke of care but not vanity. No ring, he noted, glancing at her left hand. Nor any sign of one that had been worn for any length of time.

She was exactly one month younger than Hope, he remembered; the two women had celebrated together at the halfway point between their birthdays every year. So she was thirty-seven now. He found it hard to believe, if she’d left mousehood behind very long ago, that she hadn’t been snapped up by some man. He couldn’t be the only one who’d noticed the curves. And the eyes. And the new, confident air.

“Maybe I shouldn’t have come here, but I thought you’d want to…see it.”

He realized at her quiet words that he’d left her standing there with that damned thing in her hand for too long. He shifted his gaze to the card. The sight of Hope’s familiar scrawl, as unruly as she had sometimes been, sent a jab of the old ache through him.

With the sense that he was breaching a dam holding back a host of pain, a dam it had taken him years to build, he reached out and took it.

She’d managed it, Cara thought. He’d taken the card from her, and she’d managed to keep from touching him in the process. That was success, progress even, wasn’t it?

And for the moment, he was staring at the postcard in his hand, focused on it with that quiet intensity she’d never forgotten. She could look at him now, couldn’t she? He’d never realize, or if he did, he’d think she was just watching for his reaction.

As, indeed, she would be.

Among other things.

Because now that she was face-to-face with him again, even after all this time, there was no denying that watching Gabriel Taggert do anything was and had always been one of her favorite activities.

She wanted to laugh at herself, as she had for so many years. She’d put girlish memories away, shaking her head in wry amusement whenever she thought of him and her own silly fantasies. But what she’d been able to do before, when she’d thought she’d never see him again, seemed impossible now that he was standing in front of her, all the six-plus feet, lean muscles, near-black hair and light-hazel eyes of him.

But she had laughed, back then. What else could you do when you realized you were a walking, breathing cliché? The only thing she hadn’t been sure of was which cliché was the worst, falling for a man in uniform…or falling for her best friend’s husband.

Not that she’d ever done anything about it. It wasn’t in her. For the most part she played by the rules, and always had. She’d gotten more adventurous as she’d gotten older—oddly, her daring streak had begun about the time Hope disappeared—but the basic code never faltered: there were just some things you didn’t do.

She’d known instinctively that it wasn’t in Gabe, either, to betray his wife or his vows. Not that he ever would have for her, anyway, even if he had been that kind of man. Not for the quiet, withdrawn little girl she’d been; no man would have cheated with the likes of her.

But even if she’d been some gorgeous, chic, supermodel type, Gabe just wasn’t that kind of man. Which, she knew, had been a big part of the attraction for her in the first place.

The problem now was, all the things she’d consoled herself with for the last eight years had been blown to bits.

It was a stupid kid thing, she’d told herself repeatedly. You just wanted what you didn’t have. It wasn’t Gabe, not really. You just wanted what Hope had, not the exact person Hope had.

She’d told herself that again and again, until she’d almost sold herself on the idea.

Until now.

Uh-oh, she muttered inwardly. She hadn’t seen Gabe Taggert in years, and yet within five minutes the old feelings were as strong as ever.

At least he doesn’t know, she told herself. She was spared that humiliation. She’d done that, at least, kept her silly feelings hidden from the man she could never have.

And you’ll keep it that way, she ordered herself sternly. Hope is still here, between us, and she always will be.

She made herself focus on the present, watching as Gabe’s face, tanned and attractively weathered from years on the water, changed as he looked at the postcard. The shock she had expected; it mirrored her own reaction. The envelope it had come in hadn’t given a clue to the jolt that awaited, and the letter of apology from the U.S. Postal Service had been wryly amusing. But then she’d turned over the colorful mountain scene, wondering who had taken some long-ago vacation she was only now learning about, to see the handwriting that had once been nearly as familiar as her own. The energetic and wild scrawl had made her heart leap before she even realized why, before she saw the postmark and her mind jumped in with the explanation.

“That looks like Hope’s writing,” she’d said aloud at the time.

And then, seeing the signature crammed tightly in on the side edge of the card full of bursts of words that read like Hope’s chatter, realizing it was Hope’s handwriting, had made the bottom drop out of her world.

Thanks to Hope’s parents Gabe had known this was coming, had known what she was handing him, but his shock seemed no less great; she understood that seeing it was different than simply knowing it existed. It was the difference between knowing something in your head and in your heart.

“Two miracles in one week,” he muttered, and Cara knew exactly what he was reading, the last lines of scribbling that wrapped around the rest in typical Hope fashion; planning her writing space ahead had never been her style. The excess of exclamation points had.

Two miracles in one week, Cara!! I can’t wait to tell you! I will as soon as I can, I promise. I would now, if Gabe were only here instead of out on that damned boat.

She remembered those words as clearly as if she were reading them again now.

He lifted his gaze to her face then. Those gold-flecked hazel eyes focused on her and she fought down the instinctive leap of her pulse.

“Do you have any idea what she was talking about?”

Cara shook her head. “All I know is how excited she sounded in that phone message, the day before she…disappeared.”

He looked at the card again. Read the words again, and then again. Cara tried to imagine what it must feel like for him, to see this message from the woman he’d loved, to hold something she’d touched, after all this time.

“I’m sorry about the jab,” she said. “About you being gone, I mean.”

Gabe looked up at her, gave a one-shouldered shrug. “It doesn’t matter. I know how she felt. I got used to it.”

“I never understood that,” Cara said softly. “She knew what your career was, and yet….”

Gabe’s mouth quirked. “She wouldn’t be the first woman to fall for a uniform, and then find the reality of military life too much to handle.”

“But she loved you, not the uniform,” Cara exclaimed.

“Maybe,” Gabe said.

There hadn’t been a trace of self-pity or bitterness in his voice, only the lingering uncertainty of a man who had pondered the question for a very long time.

Cara couldn’t imagine what that was like, either, to have to wonder if the person you loved really loved you back, or just an idea you represented. She wanted to hug him, but knew quite well he wouldn’t welcome the gesture.

And knew even better that it would be the worst thing she could possibly do for her own equilibrium. Just standing here with him was taking a toll on her stability.

He looked back at the postcard once more. Turned it over, stared at the picture for a moment, then flipped back to the side with the address and message.

And then his expression changed again. Cara saw his eyes narrow. He moved the card slightly. And muttered something under his breath.

He’d seen it.

This time his gaze shot to her face. “The postmark,” he said.

“I know,” she answered. “That’s the main reason I wanted you to see it.”

“The date.”

“Yes.”

She let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. His reaction, that sudden, tense alertness, told her that her own response hadn’t been out of line.

Hope had mailed this postcard from a small mountain village that, as far as she knew, Hope had never been to or even mentioned.

And she’d mailed it on the day she disappeared.

Chapter 3

“So you don’t think I’m crazy?”

Gabe looked at the woman seated across from him. She looked like she belonged here, he thought. The little mouse was definitely gone, and this woman exuded a quiet sort of class that befitted the subtle elegance and style of the Redstone flagship.

He gave himself a mental shake; he knew he was rattled when he spent so much time dwelling on the presence of a woman he’d known for years instead of the stunning bit of the past he held in his hand.

“Crazy?” he asked.

“For thinking this—” she gestured at the postcard “—means something. More than just the post office needs a little work.”

He smiled at the quip, grateful to her for lightening the mood a bit. But the truth of what she said was undeniable, as was the weight of it. They now knew what they’d never been able to determine before, where Hope had gone that day. Or at least, the direction she’d gone.

“We never even got close to looking here,” he said, tapping the card against his palm.

“There was no reason to,” Cara said reasonably. “Hope wasn’t a mountain wilderness, back-to-nature kind of person. She never even mentioned this place, at least not to me.”

“Or me,” Gabe said.

“I…” She stopped, and he shifted his gaze to her face. For the first time he saw a trace of the old, hesitant girl he’d remembered.

“What?”

“I wasn’t sure you’d even want to know, after all this time.”

“Want to know? Whether my wife was abducted, killed or just plain walked out on me?”

The words burst from him so fervently it startled him. It had always been there for the last eight years, this gnawing question, but he thought he’d managed to successfully blunt the edges of it by keeping it buried deep.

Apparently not, he thought wryly.

“Why on earth would she have walked out on you?”

“For someone else?” he suggested.

“Oh, please.”

Cara seemed sincerely astonished at the idea, which mollified his fervor and soothed the tangled emotions he didn’t like admitting to.

“You don’t think so?” He hadn’t really been convinced himself, if for no other reason than Hope had never contacted her parents. Even knowing they wouldn’t have approved of an affair, he couldn’t picture her leaving them worrying endlessly.

“Hardly. She was foolish sometimes, but not a fool.”

That surprised him; he’d thought Cara considered Hope the feminine ideal, in the way somewhat plain girls sometimes idolized their more glamorous sisters. Not that Cara was plain, at least, certainly not anymore.

“We’d had our…moments,” he said, somewhat hastily.

“I know that. But I also know she was happy, in those last days. Very.”

“When I told her I was leaving the navy, she…seemed that way. She called it…a miracle,” he said, only now realizing she’d used the word on that postcard as well. But what was the second miracle she’d written about?

Cara gave him a look then that he couldn’t quite interpret. It seemed almost sad, although about what he couldn’t guess.

“She was happy,” she said. “I know that card seems like her same old griping about you being gone, but she really had lightened up about it, after you said you were leaving. I couldn’t believe it.”

His brow furrowed as he looked at her. “You couldn’t believe what?”

“I was…shocked. I never thought you’d really do it. I thought you loved the navy.”

Those quiet words jabbed at him. He looked down at the card, not to read it again—he already had the words committed to memory—but in order not to look at Cara and see the look he now recognized as pity, or something close enough to it that it rankled.

“I never thought you’d give in to her…whining.”

Whining? An odd word for her to use to describe her best friend’s discontent, he thought, and his gaze flicked back to her face.

“Is that what you think? That I quit because my wife nagged me into it?”

“It seemed that way.” She had the grace to look uncomfortable. “On the surface,” she added, in a conciliatory tone.

“Thanks for that much,” he muttered.

“You’re still in uniform, of a sort,” she said.

He glanced down at the red polo shirt he wore, with the Redstone logo—a graphic of the Hawk I, the small jet that had begun an empire—on the left chest. Paired with crisp khakis, just as the rest of the crew wore, it was a uniform without looking like one.

“Josh doesn’t go in much for formality.”

“I’ve read about him,” she said. “He seems almost too good to be true.”

Grateful for the change of subject, Gabe nodded. “Anybody else, I’d probably agree with you. Not Josh. He started with nothing and built Redstone the hard way, one brick at a time, with his own hands. One person at a time, with his own judgment.”

She studied him for a moment. “You’re happy here,” she finally said.

“Yes,” he agreed. “I’ve got a great boat under me, and better, I answer to a man I respect completely.”

It was as close as he’d come to the real reason he’d left the navy, and he wasn’t about to come any closer with this woman he hadn’t seen in years.

He turned his attention back to the postcard. “It was mailed at eleven-twenty, according to the postage label meter. About the time it would take to get up there if she left where we lived then in San Diego at nine.”

“And Hope rarely got herself moving to go anywhere before nine,” Cara agreed.

This third dig was too much for Gabe to ignore. “I always had the idea Hope could do no wrong in your book.”

Cara shrugged. “Time was,” she said. “But a funny thing happened. I grew up.”

Gabe’s breath caught as she put her finger on the very thing that had always bothered him; Hope hadn’t seemed inclined to do that at all. She’d wanted the carefree life she’d always had, and hadn’t been happy with one reality had presented her. But she’d been so alive and vibrant that everyone had accepted it as just part of her unique charm.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Cara hastened to add, “I love her. She was the sister I never had, and I’ll always feel that way about her.”

Gabe noticed the confusion of present and past tense, but didn’t comment; he’d felt that way too often himself to make an issue of it. And more than once, in the dark of night, he had faced his innermost thoughts, admitted to the silence that it would be easier to know she’d left him. That she’d met someone who could give her the full-time attention she wanted. At least then he could be angry, or hurt, or stir up some righteous indignation. Something. Anything.

Hell, it would even be easier to know she was dead than to live forever in this limbo.

“What about you, Gabe?”

The question startled him out of the grim reverie. “What?”

“I was surprised when I talked to Hope’s parents. I’d assumed you’d have taken the legal steps by now. To have her declared dead, I mean. It’s been long enough, hasn’t it?”

“Death in absentia?” Gabe said, his mouth twisting into a humorless smile. “A very inconclusive ending.”

“But necessary, for you to go on with your life.”

“I’m here and alive, aren’t I?”

There was pure curiosity in her look then. “But…haven’t you ever wanted…I mean, hasn’t there been someone, in all this time, that made you want to—”

“No.”

There had been, in fact, women in his life. Briefly. But when the subject of his status arose, that usually brought things to a quick end. He wondered how many of those women suspected he’d had something to do with his wife’s disappearance and had run for their lives. He couldn’t blame them, not really; too often it was the truth, and none of them had gotten to know him well enough to trust in his innocence. The fact that he’d been half a world away aboard an amphibious assault ship had been a pretty unassailable personal alibi, but there were conspiracy theorists everywhere, too many of them writing the news, it seemed.

And in the end, he hadn’t cared enough to pursue it. That part of him seemed numb, and he wasn’t sure he didn’t like it that way.

“Do you think it would be worth looking into?”

Again her question snapped him out of the unpleasant thoughts. He wasn’t usually one to get lost in his head like this, and it bothered him that he was now. It had to be Cara, he thought. Just her presence, so familiar and yet so changed, that had his mind spinning into all these old, dark places.

“Do you even want to?” Cara asked after a moment when he didn’t speak.

Her tone was even, non-judgmental, and he had the feeling that if he said no, she’d accept it. And if she thought less of him for it, she would never let it show. Not just because she’d always kept her thoughts to herself, although she had, but because he sensed the classy demeanor was real, not just a facade.

“Is it worth it?” He echoed her words, running them through his head.

“I don’t know. My first thought was to call the police. But I couldn’t drag it all up again, if it’s going to come to nothing. Hope’s parents…”

Her voice trailed off. He knew exactly what she meant, and slowly shook his head. The memory of the pain in those much-loved, worn faces made his chest tighten.

“They’ve been through enough,” he said.

She nodded. “Calling them, telling them, was so hard. They took it so hard…I didn’t know what to do. So instead of calling the police, I came to you.”

Something in her voice made his chest tighten even more. “Why?”

It was out before he thought, and he wondered why he’d asked, when in fact it didn’t really matter why she’d come here. She had, and it was in his lap now.

“Because no one has a bigger stake in this than you,” she said simply.

“Yours is pretty big,” he pointed out. “She was your best friend for most of your life.”

“Yes,” she agreed. “But she was your wife. It doesn’t get any bigger than that.”

Oddly, it was her assessment of the marriage relationship that he focused on, rather than the old ache of speaking of Hope in the past tense. Interesting, he thought. And wondered again if she’d married somewhere along the line. And then, suddenly, he was asking her.

“Did you marry someone, Cara?”

She looked startled at the sudden shift. But she answered, with the direct honesty he’d always remembered, the honesty he was glad hadn’t been glossed over by the more sophisticated appearance.

“No. I was engaged. He was killed.”

In seven short words she made him regret he’d ever asked, wish he’d smothered his curiosity.

“I’m sorry.”

“Me, too. He was a nice guy.”

He wondered if he should ask what had happened, now that he’d lifted the lid on that box of troubles.

“It’s all right,” she said, her voice still even. “It was six years ago. It’s not…raw, anymore.”

Six years. Fairly soon after Hope had vanished. Connection? he wondered. Had she gone looking for comfort and found it in some…nice guy’s arms?

None of your business, he told himself. And gestured abruptly with the card.

“I’m not sure this is enough to go to the police with, not after all this time.”

“I wasn’t sure, either,” she said. “But it seemed as if I should do…something.”

He looked again at the postmark, at the date and time that would be a marker in his life for as long as he lived. Could he really pass up the chance to get answers? Perhaps too much time had passed, perhaps nothing would come of it, but could he really just walk away, hand this card to Cara and pretend he’d never seen it, that this message from the past had never arrived at all?

He knew he couldn’t. His gaze flicked back to Cara’s face, and he suddenly knew she couldn’t, either. If he said no, she would accept it, but she wouldn’t walk away from it herself. She wouldn’t forget, wouldn’t even try. He wasn’t sure how or why he was so certain of it, but he was. Maybe he’d known the little mouse better than he’d realized; tenacity had always been one of her qualities, he thought now.

“I just don’t know what I could do,” she said. “The police, they have resources, ways of checking on things, that I don’t have.”

He wondered for the first time what she was doing these days. He vaguely remembered she’d been a business and marketing major in college, and wondered what that had translated into in a real-life career.

And then her words stirred up something in his head.

They have resources, ways of checking on things, Cara had said of the police.

…if you need anything, if Redstone can help, call.

Josh’s words echoed, and Gabe suddenly realized that while he wasn’t the police, he certainly had some sizable and impressive resources at his disposal. Maybe even Redstone Security, the much-vaunted and incredibly effective private security force that had grown along with Redstone to handle problems around the world. He’d heard stories he wouldn’t have believed were he outside Redstone, of things they’d done, operations they’d pulled off, all without stepping on the toes of law enforcement. In fact, he’d heard they were the envy of cops wherever they went, for both their freedom and those resources.

And wouldn’t it just figure, he thought, if the job he’d taken in near desperation while floundering in the aftermath of his wife’s disappearance, turned out to be the instrument of his finally discovering what had happened to Hope?

“Let me make a call,” he told Cara.

He took his cell phone out of his back pocket.

He was about to find out if all the stories were true.

Chapter 4

“Expected you.”

Gabe blinked. “You did?” he said into the phone.

“Josh said.”

St. John’s terseness was legendary at Redstone, and anyone who’d dealt with Josh’s right-hand man had had to learn to translate. But he was so incredible at what he did, so efficient, and had sources Gabe figured even Josh didn’t know—or want to know—about, that no one was about to quibble that they had to pay extra close attention to follow his extraordinary verbal leaps.

“Already?” Josh had only left here this morning.

St. John didn’t answer. Gabe supposed his comment didn’t require one; he should have known Josh wouldn’t dally if he thought one of his own might need help.

“A list?” St. John asked.

Gabe shook his head, thinking dealing with St. John as liaison was going to be interesting. Technically, his title was vice-president of operations, but anyone who’d been around very long knew there were few aspects of Redstone St. John didn’t know more about than seemed humanly possible.

“Not yet, not really. All I need right now is some info on Pine Lake, California. It’s a little town up in the San Bernardino mountains. Near Lake Arrowhead.”

“Target?”

This seemed oddly familiar, Gabe thought as he answered. “I’m trying to backtrack someone from a postcard that was mailed eight years ago.”

If St. John thought he was crazy, he kept it to himself, as it was rumored he did most things.

“Going yourself?” was all he said.

“Yes. Shortly.”

“This your cell?”