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Sanity slowly returned. She gulped in air, her fury finally spent.
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
She retrieved her purse and limped back toward the sidewalk. Her leather skirt had offered some protection when she fell, but she’d torn her hot pink tights, scraped her leg, skinned both knees and hands. Still, despite the ringing in her ears, nothing seemed to be broken.
She reached the sidewalk. Stupid. If Panda had seen her run into that alley, he’d have gone ballistic. But if Panda had been nearby, the kid wouldn’t have gotten close to her.
Because Panda protected people.
An awful dizziness swept through her.
Panda protected people.
She barely made it to the curb before she collapsed, her boots sinking into the rushing gutter, her stomach heaving, the words he’d spoken coming back to her.
“… out of nowhere, he slammed her into the wall. Broke her collarbone. Do you want that to happen to you?”
She cradled her forehead into her hands.
“I don’t love you, Lucy … I don’t love you.”
A lie. It wasn’t that he didn’t love her. It was that he loved her too much.
With a clap of thunder, the sky opened. Drenching rain pounded her shoulders through her trench coat, stung her scalp like sharp pebbles. The soldier who tried to strangle his wife … The man who’d beaten up his girlfriend … Panda saw himself as a potential danger to her just like them, another enemy she needed to be protected from. And he intended to do exactly that.
Her teeth began to chatter. She considered the possibility that she was making this up, but her heart knew the truth. If it hadn’t been for the steadfast anger she’d so carefully nurtured, she would have seen through him earlier.
A white van slowed and stopped. She looked up as the driver’s window came down and a middle-aged man with a grizzle of gray hair stuck his head out. “You okay, lady?”
“I’m … fine.” She struggled to her feet. The van moved on.
A flash of lightning split the night, and with it, she saw the anguish in Panda’s eyes, heard the phony belligerence in his voice. Panda didn’t trust himself not to hurt her.
She turned her face into the grimy, rain-soaked sky. He would lay down his life to protect her even from himself. How could she fight an iron will like that? She could see only one way. With an iron will of her own.
And a plan …
Chapter Twenty-six
WHEN THE FILM SHOOT ENDED, Panda went back to the i
sland, as if that would bring him closer to her. The house sat wet and lonely in the gloomy November afternoon. Leaves plugged the gutters, spiderwebs decked the windows, and tree branches littered the ground from a recent storm. He turned on the furnace and walked through the quiet rooms, his shoulders hunched, his hands in his pockets.
He hadn’t gotten around to finding another caretaker, and the furniture held a light coat of dust, but Lucy’s touch was everywhere: in the bowl of beach rocks on the sunroom coffee table, the comfortably rearranged furniture, the clutter-free shelves and tables. The house no longer felt as though it were waiting for the Remingtons to come back, but it didn’t feel like his either. It was hers. It had been since she’d first stepped inside.
The rain stopped. He pulled an old extension ladder from the garage and cleaned out the gutters, barely avoiding falling off when he slipped on a rung. He threw one of Temple’s disgusting frozen dinners in the microwave, popped a can of Coke, and tortured himself by going to bed in Lucy’s old bedroom, the one that used to be his. The next day he ate a cold breakfast, drank two mugs of coffee, and set off through the woods.
The cottage had a fresh coat of white paint and a new roof. He knocked on the back door, but Bree didn’t answer. Through the window, he saw a pot of flowers on the kitchen table and some school papers, so she and Toby were still living here. Since he didn’t have anything else to do, he sat on the front porch and waited for her to come back.
An hour later, her old Cobalt came into sight. He rose from the damp wicker chair and wandered to the steps. She stopped her car and got out. She didn’t seem upset to see him, merely puzzled.
She looked different from the person he remembered—rested, almost serene, no longer quite so thin. She wore jeans and an oatmeal-colored fleece jacket with her hair pulled up in one of those casual buns. She walked toward him with a new confidence.
He dug his hands into his pockets. “The cottage looks good.”
“We’re getting it ready to rent out next summer.”
“What about your bees?” Lucy would care about that.
