The Man Behind The Mask. Barbara Hannay

eyes were already closed, her breath coming out in soft puffs.

      So much for the warm milk.

      He went and looked at her. He felt the oddest desire to kiss her, not passionately, but a good-night kiss, like a father might give a child. Protective. Happy she was safe.

      Happy he had managed to keep at least one person safe from the perils of life.

      Brendan went down the steps. The kitchen was empty; no milk was out or on the stove. Luke was stretched out on the living room couch.

      The empty carrier was beside him, and Charlie, a cat who hated both animal and man equally, was stretched out over the boy’s chest. The black-and-white kitten, Ranger, was curled into Charlie’s belly. They were all fast asleep.

      Brendan moved closer. Charlie didn’t even look like the same cat. He certainly didn’t sound like it. The death rattle Brendan had heard earlier was gone.

      Maybe he had died. Brendan reached out uneasily and touched him. The cat’s fur was warm beneath his fingertips and the animal sighed.

      He yanked his hand back. There was no such thing as a healer, he told himself, annoyed. Nora had barely glanced at the cat, anyway.

      The boy’s cell phone was on the coffee table, and Brendan picked it up and checked. Sure enough, Luke had set the alarm to go off every hour on the hour. But the boy couldn’t be trusted to cook milk. Besides, he looked exhausted, with dark circles under his eyes, his face pale and taut, even in sleep.

      Brendan suddenly knew he couldn’t leave them alone with this.

      He could feel it. Around the boy. And around her. They’d both been carrying it for too long.

      Brendan flicked through the settings on the phone, turned off the alarm and slowly climbed back up the stairs to Nora’s room.

CHAPTER SIX

      OUTSIDE THE DOOR of that terrifyingly bridal bedroom, Brendan flicked open his own cell phone.

      Logically, he knew he could not take this on right now. He had a deadline coming up. Village on the Lake was an amazing opportunity, and he knew the condo project would be the most prestigious of his career to date.

      But once before he had chosen work when there was another choice to be made. He had been driven by his need to succeed, driven to outrun the ghosts of his own childhood, driven to be worthy of a wife who came from far different circumstances than he had.

      He had needed to be something, or prove something, to have something he didn’t have, and he had made a choice that had left him with nothing at all.

      That choice had left his heart trapped behind a wall, in a yawning cavern of emptiness.

      Could you come to the same fork in the road again? And make a different choice? Not one that would change what had been, nor could alter what had already transpired, but one that changed who you could be?

      He shook off the thoughts, finished dialing. His secretary’s voice came over the answering machine.

      “You’ve reached Grant Architects. We can’t take your call right now, but we’ll get back to you as soon as we can.”

      “Linda, I won’t be in today.” Added to all the work that Nora and her nephew undoubtedly did themselves, Deedee was in the hospital. She would need company. And word-search books and updates on Charlie. Brendan had no doubt she would be the world’s most impatient patient.

      “There is a possibility—” horrible as it was, he recognized it was a real possibility “—that I might not be in this week. Send—” he named a junior architect “—to supervise the Village.”

      And then he closed his cell phone and contemplated the magnitude of what he had just done. He didn’t miss work. Not ever.

      And then, anticipating it would start ringing right at seven—with fires to be put out, clients, construction site foremen, Linda protesting time off was impossible—he shut it completely off.

      He knew there were going to be a lot of questions about his absence. Saying it was uncharacteristic was an understatement.

      There were going to be a lot of questions.

      And he was not at all sure he had any answers. Because niggling at the back of his mind was the thought that he didn’t want to be there when they broke ground on Village on the Lake. He didn’t want to be there as his plan took on life. He already knew that his feeling of dissatisfaction would grow in proportion to the buildings taking shape, becoming more and more real.

      He slid through the door of the bedroom. There was a chair—white, of course—beside her bed and he took it, a bit guiltily, because his clothes were a little the worse for wear also. He was tempted to put his cell phone back on to use the alarm, just as Luke had intended to do.

      And then Brendan was annoyed with himself that he had lasted less than a minute without wanting to rely on his cell phone, so stubbornly didn’t turn it back on.

      It was part of that relentless busyness that had helped him survive. Just like putting even more ungodly hours in at work than he had before the accident.

      Something in him wanted to stop. That astounded him. Something in him wanted to rest, and be introspective.

      Was part of him ready to heal, to crawl back into the light, shielding his eyes from the brilliance? And maybe, just maybe, was this a place where things like that happened? Where something that was dead in a man could be resurrected?

      Maybe it was. Look at that cat down there.

      Honestly, Brendan could not believe he was entertaining such thoughts—totally unfounded in any kind of science, totally whimsical, the magical thinking of a little boy.

      Mommy, I’m going to buy you a castle someday. I promise.

      The memory of those words shook him, and he shivered as though someone had walked across his grave. Hadn’t he known from the minute he had driven under that sign that things were about to go sideways?

      Annoyed with himself, he sought refuge in the way he always had, but on a point of pride would not turn on his phone to check the weather or the stock report. He prowled restlessly. Starting with the virginal whiteness, the room told him things about her that she might have preferred he didn’t know.

      There was a picture of her and Luke on her dresser. But none of a man. There was a stack of bills there, too. Why would she have those in her room, unless she wanted to worry over them in private, protect the boy from anxiety?

      There was a laundry basket on the floor, full of neatly folded items. She would have been devastated that her underwear was on top. It reminded him of her pajamas, utilitarian, not sexy. There was no jewelry on the dresser, no nod to that feminine longing for the pretty and the frivolous.

      If he was a man who felt things, he might have felt a little sad for her and what the room told him about her. Snowed under with responsibility, alone, and sworn off the small pleasure of celebrating her own prettiness.

      And then his eyes went to the papers stuck under the alarm clock. They looked like letters, and he shifted over and cut his eyes to them. He wasn’t going to read personal mail.

      Only they didn’t look personal. In fact, the letter on top began “Dear Rover.”

      Intrigued, remembering Deedee had said something about Nora being Ask Rover, he picked up the letter.

      “Dear Rover,” he read, “I have a new boyfriend. He is everything I ever dreamed of. Handsome. Funny. He has a good job. There is only one problem. I have a thirteen-year-old malamute cross named Sigh. They hate each other. What should I do?” It was signed “Confused.”

      The handwriting changed. Though still feminine, it was Rover’s—make that Nora’s—response, Brendan