“If he hadn’t taken a stand against your father’s directive by the time he was thirty, he probably wasn’t going to. You can’t blame yourself for the fact that his son killed him when he found out John was seeing other women. That’s not your fault, Terry.”
While he appreciated what she was doing, the weight of that guilt was something Terry carried with him every day. “Where does this leave us?”
She looked down at their joined hands and then back at him, sadness radiating from her. “I need to think about it.”
“I suppose that’s better than ‘I never want to see you again.’”
Her smile didn’t quite reach her eyes. “I didn’t say that.”
He held her hand between both of his. “Take all the time you need. You know where I am when you’re done thinking.”
When he would’ve withdrawn his hands, she tightened her grip. “Thank you for telling me.”
“I should’ve done it sooner.”
“When exactly is the right time for a conversation like this?”
“Damned if I know,” he said with a laugh. “This is all new to me.” Taking a big gamble, he leaned in to kiss her cheek just as she turned her face. Their lips collided and since his eyes were wide open, he watched hers flutter closed. Encouraged, he raised his hand to her face, keeping the kiss light and undemanding.
By the time he finally pulled back from her, his heart was racing again. She seemed to have that effect on him. “Sorry about that.”
“No, you’re not,” she teased.
“No,” he said, laughing, “I’m really not.” Reluctantly, he released her hand and stood. “I hope you’ll call me.”
“I will. When I’m ready.”
“Fair enough,” he said as she walked him to the door.
Terry stepped into the cool air and took deep breaths. In eighty-six days of sobriety, he’d never wanted a drink more than he did just then. But rather than head to one of his favorite watering holes, he reached for his cell phone and called his sponsor.
Sam and Nick worked their way through the pile of cards and a bottle of wine.
“This one’s nice,” Nick said. “‘You’re a gorgeous couple. Can’t wait to see the gorgeous children.’”
Sam glanced at him. “Must be one of the six people in the region who hasn’t heard about my fertility issues.” The miscarriage she’d suffered just after Valentine’s Day had proven two things—one, that she was able to conceive despite what she’d been told after an earlier miscarriage, and two, she was not ready to try again. Before their wedding she’d had a contraceptive shot, which bought her three months of not thinking about “the issue” that loomed large over her entire life.
“They would be beautiful, you know—especially if they look like their mother.”
Taking a long sip of her wine, she studied him over the glass. “Something you want to say?”
He shrugged. “Just wondering.”
“About?”
“What happens at the end of the three months?”
Sam’s stomach sank. She
almost
preferred the days when she still thought the plumbing didn’t work anymore. “What about it?”
“Have you given it any thought?”
Sam stared at him. “Are you seriously asking me that? Like I don’t think about it
all the time?
I can’t remember what I used to think about before I knew it might be possible…” Her voice caught. Damn if this subject didn’t always get to her!
He wrapped his gloved hand around hers. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked it that way. I know you’ve thought about it.”
“Obsessed about it, you mean.”
His face set in an unreadable expression, Nick released her hand, reached for another card, used a letter opener on the envelope and scanned the message. He tossed it aside and reached for the next one.
“That’s it? End of conversation?”
“I wish I hadn’t said anything.” Sighing, he sat back against the sofa, took off the latex gloves and ran his fingers through his hair. “I can’t deal with how sad you get when we talk about this. It kills me.”
“When I think about getting pregnant again, I picture a baby growing inside me.” She rested her hand on her belly. “They say the quickening, when the baby starts to move, is like butterfly wings fluttering. Can you imagine what that must feel like?”
“Sam…”
“I’ve never gotten that far, so I don’t know what it’s like to feel the baby move. But because of what I’ve been through in the past,” she said, swiping at a tear that rolled down her face, “when I think of being pregnant, I also have to think about losing it. And it was bad enough losing your baby once. If it happened again…”
He drew her into his arms. “I want you to know what it feels like to have a baby move inside of you. I want that more than anything.”
“Somehow I’ve managed to get through four miscarriages. I don’t know if I could survive it again.”
“Then let’s not risk it. It’s not worth the gamble.”
“It’s just that knowing I
can
get pregnant again… That changes everything.” Desperate to finish the job and get to bed, she sat up and reached for another card. “Oh man.”
“What is it?”
She stared at the card.
“Sam?”
“It’s from my mother.”
“What does it say?”
“Um…That she saw the pictures, I looked beautiful, you’re so handsome, we look wonderful together.” She tossed the card aside. “Yada yada.”
Nick reached for it. “You left out the part about how she’d love to hear from you sometime and would like to meet me.”
“Like that’s going to happen.”
“When was the last time you saw her?”
“At my first wedding. She started a big fight with my dad—right in the middle of the wedding. After that, none of us wanted to see her again.” Sam stared at the card on the table for a long moment before she glanced at Nick. “
She
left
him
—for another guy. What right does she have to show up again years later and act like it was all his fault?”
“No right.”
“What? I can tell you’re dying to say something.”
“Just that only the two people in it know what really goes on in a marriage.”
Sam tossed the card into the pile they planned to trash. “He was totally devoted to her, which was way more than she deserved.”
“That’s what he wanted you to see, but who knows what really happened?”
Sam stared at him. “You can’t seriously be defending her.”
“I don’t even know her. I’m only saying there could be more to the story than what he’s told you.”
Before Sam could respond to that outrageous statement, her cell phone rang. Seeing Jeannie’s number on the caller ID, Sam took the call. “Hi, Jeannie.”
“I’m sorry to call so late, Lieutenant, but I thought you’d want to know I found another one.”
Sam let her head fall forward as she absorbed the implications. No longer was this about a single threat. Rather, they were dealing with a calculated, intentional campaign. “What’s it say?”
“‘Rose are red, violets are blue, bang, bang you’re dead, who will miss you?’”
Images of the massive crowds Nick’s campaign had been attracting flashed through Sam’s mind, leaving a sick, nauseous feeling in the pit of her stomach.
“Lieutenant?”
“I’m here.”
“Like the other, this one smelled like flowers—carnations, I think, and there was confetti.”
“Bag it all.”
“Already done.”
“Who was it addressed to?”
“Nick.”
Sam ran her fingers through her hair, hoping to buy a minute to absorb this latest development before she had to face him.
“Are you okay?” Jeannie asked.
“Yes, just thinking. Have you been working all this time?”
“Except for a dinner break.”
“Thank you, Jeannie. I appreciate the help.”
“I appreciate the nudge.”
“Any time you’re ready to come back…”
“I might be getting closer. It felt good to be back in the game today, even if it was from the sidelines.”
And that, Sam thought, had been the goal of involving the traumatized detective. “I’m glad. I’ll be by in the morning to pick up the card.”
“I’ll be here.”
Sam put her phone down on the table.
“What’d it say?” Nick asked.
She relayed the message, glancing at the handsome man who’d become the center of her world. And now someone was threatening his life. But
why?
“You need security.”
“So do you.”
“This one was directed at you. They’re talking about
shooting
you.”
“Why would someone want to shoot me? I haven’t been in office long enough to piss off anyone that badly.”
“If it’s someone I’ve put in jail and they’re out for revenge, what better way to get at me than to have someone take a shot at you?”
“Or if it’s someone who’s bitter that I got handed a Senate seat without doing a damned thing to earn it, what better way to get at me than to take a shot at you?”
She scowled at him. “I carry a gun. I work with a partner who carries a gun. I’m trained to be observant and vigilant. It’s not the same thing.”
“I’ll request security only after you tell me what special measures the department is taking to protect you—and not one minute before.”
“Fine.”
“Fine.”
“God, I’m tired.” She contemplated the two or three hundred unopened cards that remained in the pile. “My eyes are crossed.” While they finished going through the remaining cards, Nick polished off the wine.
“Can we go to bed now?” he asked when the last card had been opened.
Even though she was itching to go get that card from Jeannie, she said, “I guess so.” Back in the day she would have rushed off to take care of something that would keep until morning. But now she had a good reason to stay home—the best reason.
She followed him upstairs, going through the routine of brushing her teeth and getting undressed as she ran through the disturbingly long list of people who might want to do her—and her husband—harm. Tomorrow she’d start looking into the whereabouts of each and every one of them as well as others she’d no doubt forgotten all about.
In bed, Nick reached for her and brought her into his embrace. The heat of his skin against hers, his endlessly appealing scent, the brush of his chest hair against her face—that was all it took to make her want him—again.
“I know you’re tired,” he said as he bit back a yawn. “We don’t have to do anything.”
Sam wrapped her hand around his erection and stroked him. “We don’t have to do
anything?
”
He gasped and tightened his hold on her. “Keep that up, and we’ll be doing something.”
“I have a headache.”
“Want me to get you some pills?”
“I’m joking. Now that I’m your wife, I can’t be as easy as I was when I was just your girlfriend. And I’ve been pretty damned easy since our wedding.”
Laughing, he said, “Easy is good.” He shifted so he was on top of her. “In fact, easy is preferred.”
Sam looped her arms around his neck and held on tight, steeped in the magic that never failed to amaze and astound her.
“I didn’t realize,” he said, brushing his lips softly over hers, “what I was missing until you came along and showed me.”
“Nick,” she whispered, moved by his words. He’d been so alone for most of his life, but now they had each other, and she wanted to give him everything he’d missed out on—especially a family to call his own. “I love you.”
“Love you too, babe.” Entering her in one smooth thrust, he stayed perfectly still. “This is what I live for now.
You
are what I live for.”
Arching into him, she urged him to move. “Me too. What does it say about us that we can’t get enough of this?”
“That we’re pretty damned lucky,” he said, keeping his movements slow and deliberate.
“Yes, we are.” Sam’s orgasm built like a wave rolling toward the beach, and when it broke, she cried out, taking him with her. After, when he would have rolled to his side, she held on tight, determined to do everything in her power to protect this man and this love from whomever would do them harm.
Jeannie stood under the shower and let the pulsing water work out the kinks in her neck and back from the long day spent opening mail at Michael’s dining room table. She’d meant what she’d said to Sam, that being useful again had made her feel slightly better than she had since the attack.
Maybe it was time to get back to it, to rejoin her life already in progress, to stop hiding out in Michael’s comfortable home, sealed away from the world.
With her hand propped against the shower wall, she took another blissful moment to let the shower massage her shoulders. Emerging from the bathroom a few minutes later she found Michael already in bed, his eyes closed. She took a moment to study his broad shoulders, muscular chest and smooth dark brown skin. The first time she met him she thought he was the most handsome man she’d ever beheld. Struck by his six-foot, six-inch height, she’d been dazzled from the start. Add in the successful career in finance, his unfailing sense of style and the tenderness he’d shown her since day one, and it hadn’t taken her long to fall for him.
He’d been about to propose. Before. The signs had been hard to miss. Since then, he’d been a rock of support, unfailing patience and more of that legendary tenderness, even as she’d flinched under every touch, every caress. Not once, though, had they spoken of the future that had seemed so assured before the attack.
Without opening his eyes, he extended his hand. “Come to bed.”
“How did you know I was here?”
“I always know where you are.” He patted the bed again. “Come on. You worked hard today. You have to be tired.”
She was tired. Tired of hiding, tired of being a victim, tired of reliving the nightmare over and over again. Dropping the silk robe he’d bought her into a puddle at her feet, she slid between the cool sheets. Before she met Michael, sheets had been sheets. Now she was spoiled by Egyptian cotton. She snuggled up to him, and felt him tense as he realized she was naked.
“Baby, what’re you doing?”
“Holding you,” she said, even as her entire body was seized by panic reminiscent of that day. “Is it okay?”
He released an unsteady laugh. “Sure is. Could I hold you too?”
She appreciated that he’d asked, that he sensed what the effort was costing her. Nodding, she raised her head so he could slip an arm under her.
He drew her in close to him, but not so close she would feel confined.
She rested her head on his chest, remembering all the nights she had slept just like this, snuggled up to him, embraced in his strong arms, breathing him in. Telling herself he was nothing like the man who’d attacked her helped to calm her overactive imagination and her rampaging nerves.
“You’re okay, baby,” he whispered as his lips brushed her forehead. “You’re safe. You’re loved. Everything is just fine.”
Tears spilled from her tightly closed eyes, wetting his chest and her face. He’d been so good. So patient. So understanding. She wanted to give something back to him, to regain some of what they’d lost at the hands of a monster. If only she could be sure it wouldn’t somehow make things worse.
Tentatively, she moved her hand over his chest to find his abdominal muscles rigid with tension.
“Jeannie?”
If she spoke, if she said a single word, she might lose her nerve. So she stayed quiet as her hand relearned the body she had come to know so well—as well as her own.
Michael stayed so still she wondered if he was breathing.
Even as she caressed him, the tears continued to leak from her eyes. Summoning the courage to continue, she sent her hand under the covers. She found him fully erect and throbbing.
“Sorry,” he said through what sound like gritted teeth. “Can’t help—”
“It’s okay.” She raised herself up to trail kisses over his stomach as she stroked him.
He sucked in a sharp deep breath when he realized her intention. “Jeannie, honey, you don’t have to…Oh…
Jesus.
”
Taking him into her mouth, she used her tongue the way he liked, all the while telling herself this was not the man who had hurt her. This was the man who loved her, who had stood by her through the darkest days of her life. This was the man she loved. She let her hair cover her face so he wouldn’t see the tears that kept coming despite her desire to get through this without them.