Ladies' Man (16 page)

He moved his head to look down at his hand, and there she was. She’d pulled a chair next to him, and she’d fallen asleep, her head resting on his bed.

He pulled in a breath to speak—bad idea. His words came out as a groan of pain, but it got the job done. She lifted her head, pushing her hair back from her face.

“Sam?”

He didn’t breathe quite so deeply this time. “Hey, babe,” he said, nearly soundlessly.

She started to laugh and cry, both at the same time. “I better call the nurse.”

“Are you kidding? I don’t want to kiss the nurse—I want to kiss
you
.”

She pushed the call button anyway, then leaned over him, gently brushing his lips with hers.

“The doctor says you’re going to be all right,” she told him.

“Told you I don’t quit.”

Ellen squeezed his hand. “I’ve decided not to quit either.” She smiled at him. It was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. “Because you were right.”

Sam forced his eyes open a little wider, but he felt more of the painkiller kick in and he knew it was a losing fight.

She took a deep breath. “I was wondering if maybe, in September, you would, um, consider relocating to Connecticut. You see, I’m not going to stay in New York. I don’t want that soap job. I
really
don’t want it, Sam—it’s not just because I’m afraid of change. I liked acting when I was working with Lydia—that’s what made it fun. Being with my daughter. But when Lydia wasn’t there, it was tedious. It’s all waiting around and…I’m babbling because I just virtually asked you to move in with me, and maybe what you had more in mind was going out to dinner.”

Move in with Ellen.
Move in
with
Ellen
. Hell, he didn’t need the painkiller. He only needed to hear her say things like that and he was filled with euphoria.

“Yes,” he said. “Connecticut. Yes.” It was an effort for him to get the words out, but he was rewarded by another soft kiss.

He closed his eyes, letting himself drift back into sleep, his future stretching out ahead of him like some endless shining road.

Connecticut.
Yes
.

T
his,” T.S. said emphatically, looking down at Sam, still plugged into all kinds of machines and tubes, “is definitely a reason to keep avoiding all those talk show invitations.”

“You remember back in seventh grade when Eben O’Hara fired that spitball at me and it hit you right in the face?” Sam asked.

“Yeah?”

“Well, now we’re even.”

“Yeah, right. I take a spitball for you, you take three bullets for me? I owe you more than you could possibly know, my friend.”

“What have you heard about this guy, this psycho, Geoffrey what’s-his-name?”

“Whittier. Geoff Whittier.”

“One of the detectives who searched his apartment came to see me yesterday, but I was still pretty out of it,” Sam told his friend. “I have this vague memory of him telling me that this guy’s place was unreal—something about him painting those freaky pictures on his walls?”

“Yeah,” T.S. said. “I had a chance to read some of his journal entries. Sick stuff. He actually thought that aliens could speak to him. I’m guessing he was severely paranoid schizophrenic—hearing voices.”

“Voices that told him to kill you because you wrote a book that gave equal time to the people who discount alien abductions.”

“He had it in for me,” T.S. said soberly. “Apparently he’d been waiting around for
years
for the chance to find me and blow me away.”

“And what was this Whittier guy’s connection to…was it Bob’s limo driver?”

“Okay,” T.S. told him. “You paying attention? Geoffrey Whittier lived next door to Ron’s—Bob’s limo driver’s—brother-in-law. His wife’s brother.”

Sam ticked off the connection on his fingers. “You’re kidding.”

“Andy—that’s Ron’s brother-in-law—he said that this Geoffrey Whittier came over to his apartment all the time. So he was there when Ron’s wife called, all excited because Ron had met T. S. Harrison—which was really you.”

Sam closed his eyes. “Oh, man.”

“Ron’s wife described you to her brother, who then told Geoffrey what T. S. Harrison supposedly looked like.”

“Blond hair,” Sam said. “Right?”

“You saw those pictures. That was supposed to be
you
, white boy.” T.S. shook his head. “Pretty sick stuff.”

There was commotion at the door, and Sam turned to see Ellen coming inside, along with Lydia and Jamie.

“They moved you!” Jamie announced. “Mom thought at first that maybe you died.”

“I did not,” Ellen exclaimed. Still, she came over and gave him an extremely heartfelt kiss. “You’re out of intensive care.”

He smiled at her, lacing his fingers with hers, tugging her down until she was sitting on the edge of his bed. “I am.”

“How exciting! You look wonderful.”

“Are you kidding?” Jamie interrupted. “Sam, God, you look
awful
!”

Lydia smacked her brother on the top of his head.

“Ouch! But he
does
.”

“You should’ve seen me a week ago,” Sam told the little boy.

“Well, I didn’t.” Jamie sniffed, insulted. “They wouldn’t let me.”

“They didn’t want your nasty little boy germs to infect him,” Lydia told her brother, who pointedly ignored her.

“I got my class schedule for September,” Jamie told Sam. “I got Mr. Brooks for homeroom. He’s a total pain in the—”

“I can’t believe we got our class assignments already,” Lydia lamented. “I mean, come on. The summer’s not even half over. It’s not like we’re going back to Connecticut for at
least
another month.”

Connecticut. Yes.

Sam squinted, trying to focus on a very hazy memory. Was it possible? “Did you ask me to move to Connecticut with you?” he blurted out, unable to hold his question in.

Dead silence. Both Jamie and Lydia were struck silent, and Sam knew from the look in Ellen’s eyes that this was perhaps not the wisest time to bring up the subject. Still, he had to know, right that moment. “You did, didn’t you?”

T.S. stood up. “How about I take Jamie and Lydia down to the cafeteria for an ice cream or something.”

“No way,” Jamie said. “I want to hear this.”

“Me too,” Lydia echoed. “I mean, if Mom is thinking about getting remarried—”

Ellen was enormously embarrassed. “Nobody said anything about getting married.” She could feel Sam watching her, feel his gaze on her face, and she glanced at him apologetically. “I’m sorry,” she murmured.

“Nobody said anything about getting married because the last time we talked about it, I wasn’t able to think very clearly,” he told her.

Ellen glanced up, aware that T.S. was gently but firmly leading her children out of the room. He shut the door tightly behind them.

“I’m not remembering a hallucination, am I?” Sam asked. “You
did
ask me to come to Connecticut?”

She nodded. “Sam, I’m not going to hold you to something you said while you were—”

“I’m going to assume that you don’t want me to come to Connecticut so that you can adopt me.”

She snorted, trying to hide her smile. “You think you’re too funny, don’t you?”

“I
know
I’m funny—because I’ve managed to make you laugh even though we’re talking about the dreaded M-word.”

Ellen took a deep breath. “I was thinking we could maybe start out slowly—you with your own apartment and—”

“Do you love me?” he asked.

She closed her eyes and sighed. “You know that I do.”

“Then marry me.”

Ellen sat very still. She loved this man. It was fear that kept her from saying an immediate yes. Fear that he’d hurt her the way Richard had. But he
wasn’t
Richard, he was Sam. Sam, who made her feel alive and ageless with his sparkling humor and quick wit. Sam, who’d fought tooth and nail against death itself to stay with her. Sam, who didn’t quit—who would
never
quit.

She’d nearly lost him for good a week ago. The doctor had been bluntly honest in saying that only his good health, his youth, and his tenacious will to live had kept him alive. Ellen had had to laugh when Sam, too, had pointed out that an older man probably wouldn’t have survived.

She opened her eyes and looked at him. He looked impossibly cute sitting there with his hair tousled and the golden glint of a two-day-old beard on his chin.

“All right,” she said.

“All right,” he repeated softly. He smiled at her crookedly. “Well, all right, then.” He pulled her closer for a soft, lingering kiss. “Now that we’re engaged, am I allowed to call you babe?”

Ellen laughed. “Not a chance.”

EPILOGUE

S
am pulled Ellen with him into the limousine waiting outside the church.

A freshly opened bottle of champagne waited for them, and Sam had to smile as he poured his wife a glass. His
wife
. His smile widened.

“Here’s to traffic jams,” he toasted, and she laughed.

She was gorgeous in her wedding dress. It was an eggshell white 1930s-style gown, cut low in the front and slit up the side to reveal flashes of her incredible legs. Sam couldn’t believe it when he looked at the back of the church and saw her walking down the aisle, toward him.

He’d been totally turned on—which, oddly enough, was a nice addition to the joy and emotional excitement he was feeling at finally making Ellen his wife. At least it had been nice for the first hour and a half. But it was getting to the point where he was finding it extremely difficult to think about much else besides where and when they’d get a chance to consummate the vows they’d just made.

The photographer had had them posing for pictures for an interminable length of time, and now they were heading to their reception at Bob’s house—a relatively small gathering of family and friends held upstairs in the elegant ballroom.

Sam kissed Ellen and she seemed to melt in his arms. Oh, man, the combination of this dress on this woman was killing him.

“Do you know how much I want you?” he asked huskily.

She pulled back to look into his eyes. “Do you know how much I want you?”

He kissed her again, weighing all of their options. “Do you think we can cut out of the reception early?”

“How early?”

“Like, after about five minutes?”

Ellen laughed. “I don’t think so. Maybe after a couple of hours…”

He kissed her neck, her collarbone, the luscious tops of her breasts. “I have an idea. The party’s up on the fifth floor, right? We have to take the elevator, right?”

Ellen laughed. “Are you suggesting we…?”

He lifted his head and gazed into the glowing warmth of her eyes, giving her his most convincing smile. “You told me you always wanted to.”

“Yeah, but not while seventy-five of our closest friends wonder why it’s taking us so long to travel only several hundred feet!”

“Ellen, I’m
dying
…”

Ellen gazed into her husband’s eyes and smiled. She picked up the phone and buzzed the driver. “Hi, Ron? Do you think you could take the long way—the
really
long way—home?”

Sam smiled and kissed her.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Since her explosion on to the publishing scene more than ten years ago,
Suzanne Brockmann
has written over forty books, and is now widely recognized as one of the leading voices in romantic suspense. Her work has earned her repeated appearances on the
USA Today
and
New York Times
bestseller lists, as well as numerous awards, including Romance Writers of America’s #1 Favorite Book of the Year—three years running in 2000, 2001, and 2002—two RITA awards, and many
Romantic Times
Reviewer’s Choice Awards. Suzanne lives west of Boston with her husband, Dell author Ed Gaffney. Visit her website at
www.SuzanneBrockmann.com.

BOOKS BY SUZANNE BROCKMANN

HEARTTHROB

BODYGUARD

THE UNSUNG HERO

THE DEFIANT HERO

OVER THE EDGE

OUT OF CONTROL

INTO THE NIGHT

GONE TOO FAR

FLASHPOINT

HOT TARGET

BREAKING POINT

INTO THE STORM