He answered them both at once, one at each ear. “What’s happened?”
His mother was on his cell, his father on the landline.
“Shamus didn’t come home last night,” his mother said, her voice nearly in tears. “Rachel called me.” His mother was in California with her daughter, Ariel.
“Your little brother stayed out all night and told nobody where he was going,” his father said. He was at the company apartment in Richmond, where he always stayed when a dealership was conducting a big sale. “I hope that boy is with a girl.”
“Is that your father I hear?” Mrs. Frazier asked.
“Yeah, Mom, he’s on the other phone.”
“Peregrine!” Mrs. Frazier shouted. “You went off and left our son alone!”
Colin put the two phones together.
“It’s not like he needs a babysitter,” Mr. Frazier said. “Nobody’s gonna pick him up and put him in the trunk of a car. He barely fits in the back of a three-quarter-ton pickup.”
“Always making jokes, aren’t you?” Mrs. Frazier said. “My youngest son is lost because you ran off and left him to fend for himself. He’s probably starving.”
“Rachel will—”
“Don’t you start on that again! Rachel and Pere are falling in love. Everyone but you saw it. I came here to California just to give them some privacy.”
“Ha! You went there to nag poor Ariel into getting pregnant.”
“I did no such—”
Colin put his cell down on the coffee table and laid the handset to the landline on top so they could yell at each other. He took a shower, put on clean jeans and a shirt, and when he returned, his parents were still arguing.
“If you’d leave that girl alone, maybe she’d find time to get pregnant,” Mr. Frazier was saying. “Frank wants kids, so that’s half of the battle.”
“Since when does what a man want have anything to do with babies? I’m the one who had to carry your children. Did you forget that Colin weighed ten pound and two ounces when he was born?”
Colin rolled his eyes. He’d been told that once a week during his childhood. He picked up the phones. “I have to go look for my itty-bitty, helpless baby brother and I need my cell. Go to bed, both of you.” He clicked both phones off at the same time and put his mobile in the leather pouch on his belt, right beside his gun.
He went out to the garage, got in his Jeep, and opened the big overhead door. When he saw the storm outside, he was glad he had his new house. In the last years at his apartment, he’d had to park on the street. At his parents’ house, his dad saw every garage as a place to store his cars, either the antiques or the ones he’d paid so much for that he wouldn’t allow anyone to drive them. The cars the family used—which were changed for new models every year—sat in the driveway in the rain, sun, and snow.
“At least Gemma has a carport,” he said aloud, and he liked thinking of her warm and snug in her bed.
He had an idea where Shamus was. Colin didn’t think any of his family knew how much time the boy spent at Gemma’s place. Shamus would walk there, not driving a utility vehicle, which he said was like putting up a neon sign telling where he was.
One afternoon Colin had seen Shamus give a single tap on Gemma’s door, then open it. Obviously, his visits were so familiar that he didn’t need to wait for her to let him in. Two hours later, Colin had parked nearby, meaning to go in to see Gemma, but he stopped a few feet outside and looked in. Shamus was on the couch, his big body bent over a drawing pad, his feet on the coffee table beside an empty plate and glass.
Gemma was sprawled on big cushions on the floor with neat stacks of papers around her, her beloved colored pens in a row by her ankle.
It was then that Colin realized that he loved her, and that maybe he had since he’d first seen her. He suspected that at first his attraction to her had to do with her fitting an image of how he’d always seen his future. But whatever the reason, from the first moment, he’d wanted to be with her. Never in his life had he felt more comfortable with anyone than he did with Gemma. He never felt in competition with her, as he had with Jean. With Gemma, he’d never felt anything but a deep sense of belonging, of being where he was supposed to be when it was time—and that feeling went all the way down into his very bones.
As he drove, the wipers on as fast as they’d go, Colin knew that he’d made a mistake with Gemma in not trusting her and in letting his jealousy show. Colin wondered if on some unconscious level he’d always known that Jean was concealing part of herself from him and that’s why he’d done the same to her. Maybe he’d realized that to show vulnerability to someone as aggressive as Jean would be like a gladiator admitting fear.
But Gemma was different. Gemma was real.
Colin pulled into the drive, and when he saw her Volvo under the carport, he gave a sigh of relief. He knew that for the second time in his life he was going to have to bare his soul to another human being. The first time had been when he’d told Gemma what Jean had said to him on that horrible day in his apartment. He’d survived that time of revelation. And now he knew that if he wanted Gemma—and he did—then he was going to have to “tell her” everything, including the truth about how he felt about her. What was it Mr. Lang had said? “If you like her, you better work to keep her.” The old man was right.
When Colin knocked on her door and Gemma didn’t answer, it was as though his heart jumped into his throat. Had his ruse failed and Jean’s uncle taken her? Or was she with Tris? Had Colin’s stupidity driven her to another man?
He had to work to calm himself down. When he turned the door lever and it opened, fear began to go through him. He hoped she was asleep in her bed and hadn’t heard his knock over the storm. But if she was, he was going to remind her that he’d specifically told her that she had to keep her door locked at all times.
But her bed was empty. It had been slept in, but there was no one in it now. He looked about the place with a lawman’s eye, but he saw no signs of struggle. Her pajamas had been tossed on the unmade bed, so it looked as though she’d dressed before she went out. But her car was here, and he’d never seen Gemma drive a utility vehicle, even though Lanny had said he’d made one available to her, so where was she?