Freedom's Price (15 page)

Marisala looked up at Linda in shock. “It’s new. Liam wrote a new column.”

For eighteen months I lived the uncertain life of a political prisoner in the deepest dungeon of a San Salustiano mountain prison. For eighteen months I was kept alive by my undying belief that justice would prevail, that democracy would be restored as the people of that tiny island nation rose up to reclaim a government that was for the people and by the people—not against the people. And for eighteen months I was sustained by my visions of an angel, a young girl who had tried to protect me and keep me from that very prison cell.

Marisala, you’re not a girl anymore. You’re a woman now, and you don’t know it, but I fell in love with you the first night I met you. I didn’t know it myself at the time, but what I felt for you was as strong and as pure as the truest of loves. I love you still, not because of the way you look—and you are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known, whether you’re dressed in a gunny-sack or a designer gown (secondhand, of course, Marisala. And no doubt bargained down to an acceptable price!). But I love you because of your generous heart and stubborn pride and your inability to stay quiet when injustice rears its ugly head.

She heard the door click as Linda left the room. But it wasn’t until she looked up that she realized her friend’s wife had left to give her privacy. Because Marisala was crying. There were tears running like a river down her face.

He loved her. Liam loved her. And he was
writing
again. He was writing to her. An entire column in the newspaper—just for
her
.

You know I was tortured in prison even though I’ve never talked about it. Men from the government and the army came every so often to ask me questions about the rebel guerrillas—about you and your soldiers. They thought I knew more than I did, and they would beat me and torment me to persuade me to talk.

Of course, I had nothing to say—not to them, anyway. And when they tossed me back into my dark, stinking little cell, I would fight to stay alive, no matter how badly they had hurt me. Because I had hope—hope that someday I would see your smile again. I was uncrushable. I was unbreakable because I had that powerful hope to keep my heart beating.

But then one day, they broke me.

I was brought up to the glaring brightness of the courtyard. But instead of questions and a beating, I was told that someone—a young girl—had been caught trying to smuggle some food and a message in to me.

I was terrified, because I was certain that girl was you. I demanded to see you, and the captain of the guards laughed in my face. He took great delight in telling me that the girl had been killed in the struggle with the guards. And then I saw your body, lying in the dust. I ran to you, but they stopped me before I reached you.

I didn’t see your face, they never let me see your face, but I was certain that girl was you and that you were dead.

And that day, after they beat me and threw me back into the darkness, I lay on the floor and I tried to die. They’d crushed me, Mara. With you dead, my hope was gone.

But as empty as it was, my heart wouldn’t stop beating, and four days later you were part of the rebel forces that broke down those prison walls and set us all free.

You were still alive. It wasn’t you who had died that day. It was some other girl—someone else’s hopes and dreams.

I lived in the darkness for eighteen months, but it was those last four days that damaged me nearly beyond repair. Because no man can live without hope.

Today my hope is that you’ll come home. I’m shouting from the tabletop, Mara. Please come home.

Marisala put the paper down. She pulled back the bedcovers, climbed into her clothes, and taking her suitcase, she headed for home.

TWELVE

L
IAM WAS SITTING
on the stairs when he heard the key turn in the lock. He knew it wasn’t Hector or Inez. He’d lent them his car so they could spend the day out in Hartford, visiting with Inez’s cousin, showing off baby William.

It had to be Marisala. Dear God, please let it be Marisala.

He stood up as the door opened, and…

She looked up at him as soon as she stepped inside. She was wearing jeans with holes in the knees and a leather jacket over an oversized T-shirt. Her hair was unbrushed and her face was pale and streaked from tears, and Liam was certain he had never seen her look more incredibly beautiful in his entire life.

He didn’t bother to say hi. He simply jumped right in, Marisala-style. “I love you.”

She smiled, her eyes welling up with tears that she didn’t try to hide from him as she set her suitcase on the tile floor. “I know. I read it in the
Globe
.”

He moved down one step and then another. “I’m going to try, Mara. I’m going to try to talk about the prison. I’m going to try to write about it. I know that’s not much of a promise—”

“It’s enough for me.”

“I’m terrified,” he admitted. “I’m scared to death that once I open my mouth I won’t be able to shut up. I’m scared that everything I’ve kept inside for all these years will avalanche and bury me alive.”

“Then I’ll dig you out.”

He laughed, stepping down onto the foyer’s tile floor. “I know you will. God knows you’ve dug me out before.”

“I’ll hold your hand when you want me to,” she told him. “I’ll sit with you when you write, if you want me to. I’ll hold you all night long and keep the nightmares far away. If you want me to.”

“I want.”

She stepped toward him and all he had to do was open his arms and he was holding her, kissing her. He tasted the salt of her tears on her lips along with the sweetness of her love for him.

The sharp pull of desire was so familiar and so instant, and he kissed her again, fiercely claiming her. He knew she felt his arousal because she laughed.

“Now, this is what I like.” She reached between them and cupped him boldly in her hand. “Real, solid proof of how badly you missed me.”

Liam was shocked—Marisala had always been so reserved, so passive when it came to making love.

Her eyes were sparkling as she looked up at him, but the sparkle faded quickly along with her smile when she saw the look of surprise on his face.

“I’m sorry,” she apologized quickly, stepping away from him, a blush tingeing her cheeks as she looked away. “I wasn’t thinking. I didn’t mean to—”

“Marisala.” He caught her chin in his hand, lifting it so that she had to look him in the eye. “How could you think I wouldn’t absolutely
love
for you to touch me that way? How could you think I wouldn’t want you to show me how much you want me?”

Tears had filled her eyes again. “I thought—”

“I
know
what you thought. You thought you had to be different, that you had to change. You thought I didn’t want you the way you are. You thought I wanted what Santiago wanted—someone to fade into the background, to do what you were told, to look pretty and stay silent when the men talk.”

Liam brushed his lips across her mouth. “I am so sorry I didn’t figure out what you were thinking,” he continued. “I knew something was wrong. I knew you were unhappy, and you were acting so strangely, but…”

He kissed her again, harder this time. “You’re all I’ve ever wanted.” He turned her to face the mirror that was by the door. “You. Are exactly. Who. I want.
This
you. The you with the holes in your jeans. The you who’s going to go to medical school and become the best doctor San Salustiano’s ever had. The you with the messy hair.” He shook her shoulders very slightly, and she laughed. “Baby, you may not be Santiago’s idea of a perfect wife, but you’re not marrying him, you’re marrying
me
. You
are
going to marry me?”

Marisala looked into the mirror. She looked as if she’d been dragged down a mountain by a donkey, and he looked as if he hadn’t slept since she’d left. Knowing Liam, he probably hadn’t. His eyes were filled with fatigue and rimmed with red, but his smile was pure tentative hope.

“You can keep your own name if you want,” he told her. “Hell, I’ll take
your
name if that’ll make you feel better. We’re both young, we can wait to have kids until you’re out of med school, if you want. Or if you think you don’t want any children, I’m open to discussion. I’d like to have kids, but not if it’s going to make you miserable, and I guess what I’m trying to say is that my concept of marriage involves discussion and sharing and—” He cut himself off. “You’re very quiet. It makes me nervous when you’re so quiet.”

He turned her to face him and gazed imploringly down into her eyes. “Marry me. Take a chance and say you’ll marry me. And then come upstairs and make love with me so that I can pass out afterward and sleep for about a week.”

Marisala had to laugh. “Well, God, when you put it so romantically…”

He kissed her, his unshaven face rasping sensuously against her cheeks. “Say yes.”

Liam kissed her again, trying to melt away the reserve he could still see lingering in her eyes. “You know, I was prepared to make any kind of compromise necessary,” he told her. “I was ready to tell you, okay, we don’t have to get married. We can simply live together for the rest of our lives. I was ready to say that all I want is to be with you, but that’s not true. I want us to share what we’ve got. I want to jump onto that figurative tabletop and shout to God and the world that you own me, and I own you.”

She smiled and kissed him, but still she didn’t answer. She didn’t say yes.

“Tell me what you’re thinking,” Liam implored. “Tell me what’s holding you back.”

“Sex.”

He nearly choked. “What?”

“You know what I want?”

“Please tell me.”

“I want to make love to you,” Marisala told him. “And then, after we make love—after
I
make love to
you
—then if you still want to marry me, you can ask me again.”

Liam had to laugh. “Well, hey, let me think this over…. Yes. I can go for this. Definitely.”

“Are Hector and Inez home?”

“No, they’re—”

“Good. Go upstairs and take a shower. And shave. And meet me in the living room in ten minutes.” She kissed him. “Bring a condom.”

The living room? “But…”

She was already all the way up the stairs, but she turned to look down at him. “I want to make love to you in every single room of this condo.” She tried to hide her smile, but couldn’t. “I thought we’d start with the living room.”

“But…” Liam started up the stairs after her, but she’d already gone into her room and closed the door.

He tried the knob, but she’d locked it.

Buzzing with anticipation, he took the quickest shower of his life, spending most of those ten minutes she’d allotted him shaving the rough stubble from his cheeks and chin.

His bathrobe was nowhere to be found, so he pulled on a pair of sweatshorts. He slipped a condom into his pocket and headed downstairs.

Marisala was waiting for him, wearing his missing bathrobe. Her hair was damp from her own shower, and it hung in dark curls around her shoulders and down her back. She was sitting by the window, and as he came into the room she pulled the blinds, dimming the room and giving them privacy from the outside.

“Come here,” she said.

He did.

She stood up, and he reached for her, pushing the robe from her shoulders even as she untied the belt.

She was so beautiful. The sight of her naked body still left him breathless.

She reached for him then, too, her hands slipping underneath the elastic waistband of his shorts and gliding down over his rear end as she pulled him closer. She kissed him, boldly claiming his mouth and pressing herself against him.

Liam heard himself groan as he filled his own hands with the satiny smoothness of her skin. She opened herself to him, guiding one of his hands down to touch her.

“You know what I want?” she whispered.

“God, I hope I do.”

She laughed. “I want you to sit on the couch.”

“I want to take you right now, just like this, standing up,” he countered.

“Hmm. That’s a good idea too.” Her hands swept around to the front of his shorts and her fingers closed around him.

God, he’d loved making love to her even when she was holding back—and she
had
been holding back, that much was clear. But this was off the scale. This was…

In one swift movement, she’d freed him from the confines of his shorts, pushing them down his legs. But now she knelt in front of him, and giving him a decidedly wicked smile, she touched him with the softness of her mouth, and sent him through the roof.

“Do you like that?” she finally asked, just as he knew he couldn’t take any more. Her midnight eyes were laughing up at him. She knew quite well the answer to her question.

He could barely speak. “Oh, yeah.”

“Good, because I do too.”

Somehow she’d found the condom packet he’d been carrying in his shorts. She ripped it open, and pushing him back onto the couch, she covered him with it.

Liam couldn’t wait another second. He grabbed her arms and hauled her up on top of him. She sensed his need and didn’t hesitate, letting him guide her swiftly, fiercely down onto him.

She cried out as he filled her, clinging to him, her obvious pleasure pushing him dangerously close to the edge. He lay back on the couch so that he could fill her even more as she moved on top of him, setting a fast, hard pace.

He’d never dreamed that making love could be this good. This was the real Marisala, this wildcat in his arms. This was the woman he’d fallen in love with, the woman who spoke her mind and lived every moment of her life with pure, unrestrained passion.

It was such an odd feeling—this tenderness in his chest combined with the heart-attack sensation of the most incredible sex he’d ever experienced.

Not sex. Love. This was love unlike any he’d felt before. His heart was so full, it felt about to burst.

She took his hands, pressing them against the sweet swell of her breasts as she smiled down at him.

It was her smile that did it, her beautiful, wonderful smile that sent him roaring into orbit. And, as if she had been waiting for him, he felt her sudden release. She shouted her pleasure and it echoed around them as together they escaped the confines of gravity and shattered into a million perfect pieces.

Liam floated back to earth. None of his muscles seemed to be working. They had all turned to Jell-O.

A strand of Marisala’s hair tickled his nose, but he couldn’t move his hand to push it away. Besides, he liked the sensation. He liked that she was lying on top of him, seemingly as depleted and satisfied as he was.

“So,” he said. His vocal cords still worked. That was good. “Let me see if I can figure out exactly
what
you were thinking. You thought maybe I’d have the best sex of my entire life and then
not
want to marry you?”

Marisala lifted her head, pulling her hair back from both of their faces. “I wasn’t sure if you’d like me being so…aggressive.”

He ran his finger down the side of her face. “Well, I’m not sure I’m about to go out and buy you a collection of whips and chains, but I’m up for just about anything else.”

She laughed. “That’s good.”

“Oh, yeah.” He let her see the heat he knew was lingering in his eyes. God, he was already starting to get hard again, just
thinking
about it. “So…will you marry me? Wait,” he said, putting a finger across her lips. “Don’t answer that. I seriously think we have to try this again. You know, make sure it wasn’t just a freak occurrence?”

Marisala laughed, leaning forward to kiss him. “Are you kidding? You can’t even move.”

“Is that a challenge? Because you know I can’t resist a challenge.” With a groan, Liam sat up. He scooped her up off him, and holding her in his arms, he stood up. “My turn to pick the room, and I pick
my
room.
My
bed.”

He carried her up the stairs. His tired muscles were aching, but he didn’t give a damn.

Marisala was laughing as he threw her onto his bed.

“Yes,” she said. “Yes. My answer is yes.”

Liam fell back onto the bed with her and kissed her.

The afternoon sun sparkled in through the windows and reflected off the white ceiling, lighting his bedroom with a heavenly glow. He saw the same beautiful light in Marisala’s eyes, and he knew that at last he’d come out of the darkness.

At long last, he’d come home.