Unfinished Business

Before she could think of a reasonable-sounding protest, he took her elbow and steered her inside. She pushed the button for her floor, then stood awkwardly to one side, Culley to the other.

The danger alarms were going off again, awareness surrounding them like a force field.

The elevator slid to a stop, and they stepped out. Her room was at the end of the corridor. “You don’t have to go all the way,” she said, even though something inside her screamed too late. “I’ll be fine.”

“Addy, I’m not going to leave you standing out here in the hallway,” he said and took her elbow once again.

To insist otherwise would have been silly—for heaven’s sake, he was just being polite—and she could not deny that his hand on her bare arm made her feel protected and secure, temporary as it was.

At her room, she pulled the key from her black leather clutch. He took it from her, but didn’t open the door.

“I’m really glad we got to see each other,” she said. “This night ended up very different from what it started out to be.”

His blue eyes were steady, intense, some emotion there clearly at war with itself. “For me, too.”

The elevator dinged, opening on the floor once more. The married couple from the bar stepped out and headed to the opposite end of the hall, their voices low, hushed, intimate. The key clicked in the door lock, a soft rush of laughter following.

The air in the hallway was suddenly thick. Addy drew in a quick breath, mesmerized by the man standing before her with questions in his eyes. She had no answers. Only knew herself to be spellbound by the moment and a very real desire to invite him into her room.

The thought was shocking in its clarity. She’d been married for eleven years. And she had been a faithful wife. By thought and deed. She’d had colleagues call her old-fashioned because she hadn’t bought into their so-what’s-the-big-deal-about-an-office-affair outlook, which they pushed like an illegal but socially acceptable substance. Addy’s was a live-and-let-live philosophy, but she had never bought into that kind of casual.

Culley reached out, brushed her cheek with the back of his hand, the touch gentle, tender, yet at the same time, tentative, uncertain. “I’d take the hurt away if I could, Addy.” He leaned down and kissed her cheek then, just a whisper of contact against her skin. Consolation had been his intent. Of that, she was sure. But the gesture pulled at something inside her, stirred up longings for something very different. Something that might make the awful ache inside her disappear.

“I should go,” he said.

“You should,” she agreed. Seconds passed while she grappled with the opposing forces of reason and need. Reason lost the struggle. “But I don’t want you to.”

She slipped a hand up his chest, rested it there with deliberate intent.

“Addy.” Her name came out with ragged edges and a reluctance impossible to miss. “You’re hurting.”

He hadn’t moved, and yet she could hear him backing away. He was right. She was hurting. Had been hurting for so long now that she was tired of being in this place, wanted very much to feel something different. Was that why she wanted him to kiss her? Did that explain the fact that if he turned around and left her here alone, she felt as if something inside her would break into a thousand pieces?

“Tell me to leave, and I will,” he said.

Before them lay two turns in the road, one the end of which she could clearly see: friendship, run-ins every few years. The other road was hidden and nothing could be seen beyond the immediate.

Addy wanted immediate. Nothing more than that. Just here and now. Just this night. Because more than anything she wanted to feel something. To want and be wanted.

“Stay,” she said.

An inch of space separated them. She leaned forward and kissed him. She, Addy Taylor, who had no experience in the brazen department, made this first move. She had this awful fear that he might laugh. Think her incompetent. After all, her own husband had strayed. There must be a reason.

But suddenly his arms were around her waist, pulling her to him. And he wasn’t laughing. He kissed her back with the kind of quick and urgent depth that lets a woman know a man wants her.

Blind need whirled up, clouding everything except the pinpoint of focus that was the two of them wrapped around one another, into one another.

Addy wound her arms around his neck and pulled him tight against her, not giving herself another chance to consider what they were doing. Where this would lead. To think would be to stop. She didn’t want to stop. She only wanted to erase the awful numbness inside her, this feeling of failure without understanding. Replace it with the very real feelings of needing and being needed.

Culley gathered her to him, strong arms encircling her waist, binding her to him. And there in the middle of the Plaza Hotel’s fourth-floor hallway, they indulged themselves in the kind of kiss that made all intentions clear.

The gentleness of those first moments fell away under the weight of raw need. And there were some serious forces propelling them along: long ago what-if’s and basic lust.

Very basic. And very real.

Culley walked her backwards to the wall. His knees dropped a couple of inches as he leaned up and into her.

Addy forgot to breathe. No longer needed to because he was air.

The elevator dinged again and brought them back to a short space of reality. Culley slid the key in the lock, pushed the door open and steered her into the room, still kissing her, his foot kicking the door closed.

Darkness engulfed them. From the window Addy had left cracked, traffic sounds echoed up from the street below, horns honking, car doors opening and closing. Her perfume lingered in the air where she had sprayed it earlier.

And with the privacy of the room came another level of intimacy, urgency and haste marking each kiss. She had never known this kind of need, this sense of inevitability, as if the night had been planned long ago, in another lifetime.

The housekeeper had been in to turn down the bed and left the clock radio playing on the nightstand. A DJ’s voice crooned, “And for all you night owls, we’ll pay a tribute to an old favorite, Frank Sinatra.”

There in the darkness, her fingers found the buttons of Culley’s shirt, undoing them with fumbling inaccuracy. He jerked the knot of his tie free. She slipped a hand inside his shirt, exploring the smooth, muscular warmth there.

Culley said her name, the sound low and hoarse in his throat.

The song played on around them, something about flying to the moon, and that was exactly how Addy felt, as if part of her were soaring with this purely potent mixture of want and need.

Culley’s hand went to the back of her neck, pulled her closer against him, his mouth seeking hers with a need as quick and bright as the igniting of a match. She drew in an unsteady breath, wrapping her arms around his neck, appreciating with startling awareness the hard, very male imprint of him.

They fell back onto the bed, heads colliding with the mound of pillows beneath the headboard, most of which Culley quickly swept away. Their hands reached for buttons, zippers, yanking, pulling, breaths fast and harsh, as if to stop for the briefest moment would allow reason and logic a chance at protest.

His hands transformed her from a woman whose self-image had hit bottom with the discovery of her husband’s infidelity to a woman who at this moment, felt, from the deepest part of her, wanted, desired.

It wasn’t only his touch, but the way he touched her. He made her feel as if this was something he had wanted for a very long time. Could that be true?

Maybe it didn’t matter. Maybe all that mattered was the way he lifted her up, up, way above any place she’d ever been before. Too soon, the air got thin, and she thought surely her lungs would burst. At that last moment, Culley kissed her again and said, “Are you sure, Addy?”

She could have changed her mind then and there.

Her choice.

Yes or no.

But for the first time in months, the pain inside her was gone. And all she wanted was to stay here in this place where there wasn’t any hurt. So she kissed him again. And he kissed her back.

There in the darkened hotel room, the radio continued on with its salute to Sinatra, and somewhere below the raised window, a horse nickered.

CULLEY AWOKE TO a strip of sunshine that sliced the bed in half. During the first second of wakefulness, a distinct wave of well-being rolled over him. As if he’d been rehydrated after a week without water. Replenished. Renewed.

And then he remembered. He sat up. “Addy?”

He swung out of bed, checked the bathroom only to find it empty. Glanced in the closet. No clothes. No suitcase.

He searched the bed for a note, then gave the desk across the room a similar perusal. He went to the window and stared down at the already congested traffic.

She’d left.

It didn’t take a genius to figure out what that meant.

He anchored a hand to the back of his neck. He should have just walked her to her room last night. Left when he’d seen things were getting out of hand. That’s what a friend would have done.

But the truth was he hadn’t wanted to leave.

The truth was last night had been the first time in longer than he could remember when he had been something of who he used to be. For a few hours, he’d closed the door on his guilt and simply enjoyed being with a woman who had once been his best friend.

In his regular life—the one where he wasn’t falling into bed with newly disillusioned women, the one where he was a reliable father of one and a small-town doctor known for taking the time to listen to patients who needed to talk about their problems—he would have paid attention to his own normally demanding voice of reason. It would seem he’d deliberately tuned it out last night.

But it was back this morning with a megaphone to his ear. That, combined with his stinging conscience, lit a flare of urgency inside him.

He would call her. Go see her in D.C. He’d made enough mistakes in his life to know he didn’t want this to be another on the list.

MISTAKES, WHY DID they have to feel so obvious?

By the time the plane landed in D.C. shortly after ten that morning, Addy’s regret had reached fever pitch.

She’d left the hotel room just before six, slipping out without waking him. Every time she started to remember what they’d done last night, she closed her eyes and blanked the thought.

Of all the people in the world, in New York City, why had she met up with Culley last night? A conversation and a couple glasses of wine, and she’d practically jumped him.

Heat torched her cheeks.

She had just wanted to forget for a little while. To find a place where pain couldn’t reach her. To stitch back together what felt like a permanent tear in her heart. On that, she had succeeded. For a few hours, anyway. A short-term gain with a long-term price tag.

And now came regret. A big black cloud of it.

If she could just flip the clock back a dozen hours. Just twelve hours. She would have taken the shuttle home last night. Painted Georgetown red with Ellen. Sat at home eating Ben & Jerry’s. Anything but what she had done.

Regret, real as it was, didn’t change a thing.

At least in leaving before he woke up, she’d saved them both the embarrassment of admitting what they already knew.

It should never have happened.

It would never happen again.

HER NUMBER IN D.C. was unlisted.

Culley had tried Washington information no less than five times, hoping to get a different operator with a different answer.

After leaving Addy’s room, he’d gone back to his own hotel, showered and packed, then written a note for his buddies, telling them something had come up, and he had to get home. Coward’s way out maybe, but he didn’t want to hang around for their question-and-answer session about last night. He knew them. They would be merciless.

At the airport, he pulled out his cell phone and got the number for Addy’s firm in D.C. on the off chance that she was already back and had gone there. A receptionist sent him to her voice mail. He left a short message, started to add more, but hung up at the last second. He had no idea what to say.

ADDY WENT STRAIGHT to the office, intent on burying herself under a pile of work.

Of course Ellen was there. Addy walked by her office with a neutral good-morning, heading for her own office two doors down.

“Whoa,” Ellen called out.

“Later,” Addy called back. She dropped her coat and laptop bag on the leather couch by her door, crossed the floor and collapsed into the chair behind her desk.

Ellen appeared in the doorway, leaned a shoulder against the frame, arms crossed. Her dark hair was pulled back in a ponytail, her face devoid of makeup. She was dressed in workout clothes and Nike running shoes. “Up for a run?”

During the week, the two of them ran together at lunch. Addy shook her head, pressed a finger to the dull thud in her temple. “Not today.”

Ellen raised an eyebrow. “So how’d the little black dress turn out?”

“Should have left it on the hanger.”

Ellen came in and sat down in the chair across from Addy, looking like a psychiatrist about to get a juicy morsel. “Do tell.”

“Nothing to tell.”

“I can wait.”

“Ellen, really.”

“You left the book in the room?”

Addy sighed. “No. But I did run into an old friend from high school.”

“And?”

“We sat in the Oak Bar and talked.”

“And?”

Addy tipped her head to one side.

Ellen’s eyes went wide. “You slept with him!”

Addy covered her face with her hands. “That sounds so—”

“Delicious!”

“Ellen!”

“Well, was it?”

“Ellen. I can’t believe I did that. It’s so not me.”

“It’s so exactly what you need. All these months since you and Mark split, and you haven’t even been out on a date. Not normal.”

“Oh, Ellen,” Addy said, making a face, “We grew up in the same hometown. His mom and my mom go to the movies together every Tuesday night. He must think I’m—”

“Human?”

“Easy!”

Ellen laughed. “Now there’s one for the fifties dictionary.”

“It’s not funny.”

“Addy, my God, you’re entitled. Did you practice safe—”

Addy held up a hand. “Too personal.”

Ellen chuckled again. “You were born in the wrong era, Hester.”

Addy dropped her head back, stared at the ceiling. “Why did I have to pick him? Why couldn’t it have been someone I’d never see again?”

“Because you wouldn’t have slept with someone like that. If you picked this old friend, there must have been a reason.”

“Temporary loss of faculties?”

Ellen folded her arms, gave her a long look. “Would you give yourself just a bit of a break?”

“Last night…that’s not something I would normally ever—”

Ellen held up a hand. “The conscience police are not in the room. Give yourself a little credit, Addy,” she said, her voice softening. “You’ve had a tough go of it. If last night got you away from that for a while, then what’s so wrong with that?”

“Plenty, I’m sure.”

Ellen got up, went over to the drawer where Addy kept an extra change of running clothes and shoes. She pulled them out, set them on the desk. “Get dressed. We’re going for a run. Burn off some of that guilt you’re soaking in.”

“I don’t think that’s going to fix it.”

“Yeah, but I’m gonna kick your butt on pace this morning. So at least it’ll give you something else to think about.”

Addy picked up the clothes, headed out the door to the women’s bathroom. “Gee, thanks.”

Ellen smiled. “What are friends for?”

CHAPTER FIVE

WHEN ADDY GOT HOME Saturday afternoon, there were four messages on the machine from Culley—the first one said he’d gotten her number from her mother.

On Sunday, he left three.

Monday, two.

Tuesday, one.

On Wednesday, his number was on caller ID. No message.

Thursday, nothing.

Addy felt horrible for ignoring them. But what would they say to each other? There was nothing to say. The last thing she wanted was to hear her own regret duplicated in his voice. Better to let it fade. Chalk it up to what it was. A slice of time when their paths had crossed, and they had offered each other temporary comfort. And what else could it be? Spending the night with Culley had not fixed the broken part of her, the part that had once believed in her own ability to choose wisely. That confidence had been shaken to the point that standing in one place felt like the only safe choice. To put a foot in either direction might mean setting off another explosion like the one created by her unfaithful husband. An explosion that would yet again change the landscape of her life so that nothing made any sense at all.

Addy wanted safety.

She didn’t call him back.

THE PRACTICE CULLEY had bought from old Dr. Nettles was located in a two-story house on Oak Street in the center of town. It had been built in the 1700s and was believed to have once been an inn that had welcomed such historical names as Daniel Boone.

Culley had loved the place from the first moment he walked its wood floors with the old doctor who had been forced to retire when arthritis made it nearly impossible for him to spend a day on his feet. Coming back to Harper’s Mill and starting his own practice had been a new beginning for Culley and Madeline, and for the past three years, he had known a deep and rewarding contentment for the simplicity of their lives. For so long, his life had been anything but simple, and he valued this new peace more than he would ever value any material possession.

But today, things didn’t feel simple. Hadn’t felt simple since he’d returned from New York on Saturday afternoon.

It was almost six o’clock, and he’d just seen his last patient. The waiting room had been full all day. He hadn’t even stopped for lunch. He closed the door to his office, pulled a bottle of Advil from his desk drawer, gulped a couple, then sat down on the sofa opposite his desk, dropped his head back and stared at the ceiling. He reached for the phone, then jerked his hand back as if it might dial the number without his permission. No. He couldn’t. The number of messages he’d left had reached embarrassment level a half dozen calls ago.

He ran a hand over his face. Why wouldn’t she talk to him? Did she regret what happened between them that much? Apparently so.

And he couldn’t stop thinking about her. Hadn’t been able to think of anything else since he’d woken up Saturday morning and found her gone. He thought about her while he dictated patient notes. While he read Madeline her bedtime stories. While he lay alone in bed trying to fall asleep. Wondering if he’d ever see her again.

He’d tried to look at the situation objectively. The rational part of his brain told him it was just one of those things. One of those it’ll-never-happen-again, once-in-a-lifetime things. Addy had been hurting. She’d needed someone to make her believe in herself again. Fate had just happened to put him in her path.

As for his own excuse, she’d filled some need in him as well that night. Since his divorce, he’d seen a few women. None, seriously. He wasn’t interested. He’d tried. But the last couple years of his marriage had been like living in a waking nightmare. No matter what he did, the outcome was the same.

Maybe it was the fact that he and Addy had once known everything there was to know about one another. He trusted that knowledge, had let his guard down.

He pressed two fingers to the bridge of his nose and squeezed his eyes shut, willing the ibuprofen to soften the headache pounding at his temples.

If he had any regrets about that night, they centered around the certainty that the two of them would never get the chance to see if there could have been more.

A knock sounded at the door.

“Come in,” he said.

Tracy Whitmire, the receptionist out front, popped in and put his mail on his desk. She had red hair and blue eyes that squinted at him from behind fashionable rectangular-lense glasses. “You going home soon?”

“In a while.”

“Better. That little girl of yours needs to see her daddy.”

From some, Culley might have taken that as a criticism. But Tracy was a single parent herself, and they had shared a conversation or two on the struggle to spend more time with their child during the week.

“I’m headed that way,” he said. “’Night.”

“Good night.” She closed the door behind her.

Culley picked up the mail, sorting out the junk stuff and tossing it in the trash can next to his desk. Near the bottom of the stack a return address caught his eye. Mecklinburg Women’s Correctional Facility.

He dropped the envelope, stared at it for a moment while his stomach did a roller-coaster lurch. He left it there for a minute or more, considered not opening it tonight. But then he wouldn’t sleep until he did.

He picked up the envelope, opened it quickly, pulled out the piece of paper and unfolded it. It was the blue-line kind like school kids used, torn out of a spiral binder, the edges curly. The handwriting was Liz’s, but it no longer had its characteristic boldness. It was spiderweb thin and shaky, as if her hand had trembled a little as she wrote.

Dear Culley,

I hope this letter finds you and Madeline well. Although I can’t exactly say things are good here, I’m in a better place. Have done a lot of thinking, but then what else is there to do?

How is Madeline? She must have grown so much. Does she ever ask about me?

I know I’ve been given more chances than any person deserves, certainly more than you should ever have given me. But I want to do things right this time. I’ve been such a disappointment to you and to myself. And I can barely live with the thought of the awful thing I did.

It looks as if I’m going to be released at 80% of my sentence. It’s hard to believe I only have a few more months to be here. Is there any way you could come for a visit before then? I’d really like to talk to you. I know it’s a lot to ask, and I’ve asked more of you than I ever had any right to. It would mean so much to me, though.

I’ll wait to hear from you.

Liz

Culley sat back in his chair, blew out a heavy sigh and realized he had been holding his breath. There were days when he actually went a stretch of hours without thinking about what had happened three years ago. But most of the time, it loomed in the back of his mind like a dark, dense cloud that cast a permanent shadow.

He glanced at the letter. He wanted to write her back and say he couldn’t come.

But then another part of him felt the same thing he’d felt for her in the last years of their marriage. Pity. And guilt for the fact that he hadn’t been able to help her.

And with those two emotions battling inside him, he left the letter on his desk and went home to see his daughter.

FOR THE NEXT MONTH, Addy did little more than work and sleep, eating if she happened to think about it. Ellen dragged her out a couple of nights, but the single’s scene had about as much appeal to her as an emergency root canal.

She’d actually pulled ahead of Ellen in billable hours this month, the good part being that so much work left hardly any time for mental floggings. Of which she’d given herself plenty.

There had been no more calls from Culley. Which was for the best. And although she felt a bit like a mouse trapped on a wheel, there was enough predictability in her days that she managed to convince herself there was nothing wrong with her life as she was living it.

Predictability was good. But wasn’t it always the case that just when you thought you had the tent pegs nailed down nice and secure, an unexpected wind came along and blew the whole thing out of sight?