CHAPTER 12
It had been fifteen years since they had seen each other, but it might just as easily have been yesterday. Physically, they had changed, weathered and lined by the passing years and life’s experiences, settled into midlife and aware of the steady approach of old age. But emotionally, they were frozen in time, locked in the same space they had occupied at the moment they had spoken last. Their feelings for each other ran so deep and their memories of the few days they had shared were so vivid and immediate that they were reclaimed instantly by what they had both thought lost forever.
“John?” Josie said his name softly, but the shock mirrored in her dark eyes was bright and painful.
She was older, but not enough so that it made more than a passing impression on him. Mostly, she was the way he remembered her. She still had that tanned, fresh look and that scattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose. Her blond, tousled hair was cut shorter, but it accentuated her face, lending it a soft, cameo beauty.
Only the smile was missing, that dazzling, wondrous smile, but he had no reason to expect she would be inclined to share it now with him. When he met her, the attraction was instantaneous and electric. Even though he knew that a relationship with her would be disastrous, particularly one in which he fell in love, he let it happen anyway. For two days, he allowed himself to imagine what it would be like to have a normal life, to share himself with a woman he cared about, to pretend it might lead to something permanent. Together, they spent an evening in Sinnissippi Park at a picnic and dance. When he was attacked and beaten by men who believed him someone other than who he was, she took him home, washed him, bandaged him, soothed him, and gave herself to him. When he left her in the morning for a final confrontation with the demon who was Nest Freemark’s father, walking away from her as she sat in her car looking after him, he had thought he would never see her again.
“Hello,” she said, and he realized he hadn’t said anything, but was simply standing there in the doorway, staring.
“Hello, Josie,” he managed, his own voice sounding strange to him, forced and dry. “How are you?”
“Good.” The shock in her eyes had eased, but she didn’t seem to be having any better luck than he was with conversation. “I didn’t know you were here.”
“My coming was kind of unexpected.”
He felt slow and awkward in her presence, aware of his ragged appearance in old jeans, plaid work shirt, and scuffed boots. His long hair, tied back from his face and still damp from his shower, was shot through with gray and had receded above his temples. He bore the scars from his battles with the minions of the Void across his sun-browned face and forearms, and the damage to his leg ached more often these days. He found Josie as fresh and youthful as ever, but believed that to her he must look old and used up.
He glanced down at the plate of cookies she was holding in her hands, seeing them for the first time.
Her eyes lowered. “I brought them for Nest. She always bakes cookies for everyone else, so I thought someone ought to bake some for her. Can I come in?”
“Of course,” he said hurriedly, stepping back. “Guess my mind is somewhere else. Come in.” He waited until she was inside and then closed the door. “Nest is out in the park, but she should be back in a few minutes.”
They stared at each other in the shadowed entry, hearing the ticking of the grandfather clock and the low murmur of Bennett reading to Harper.
“You look tired, John,” she said finally.
“You look wonderful.”
The words were out of his mouth before he could stop them. Josie flushed, then released that blinding smile, and he felt as if nothing on earth would ever be more welcome.
“That smile—now there’s something I’ve thought about often,” he admitted, shaking his head at what he was feeling inside, knowing already he shouldn’t allow it, unable to help himself.