“He could kill you.”
“I believe Sammy. He has no reason to lie to me.”
“I can think of half a dozen reasons,” Jake said.
“Watch it.” Sammy moved toward them.
“Stop it! Both of you.” She turned to Sammy. “Can you set up a meeting? Soon?”
He nodded. “I can send a car for you tomorrow.”
“Give us the address and we’ll come in our own car,” Jake said.
Sammy shook his head. “And risk you tipping off the feds? No way. I’ll send a car. And Elizabeth comes alone—without you or anybody else. And if we catch anyone tailing our car, there’ll be hell to pay.”
“All right,” Anne answered before Jake could object again. “But Jake will be waiting for me, and if I don’t check in with him every thirty minutes, he’ll contact the U.S. Marshals office.”
“I don’t like it,” Jake said.
“It’s not your decision to make.” To soften her words, she went to him and put one hand on his chest. “This is the only family I have. If I can find a way to make peace with them, I have to risk it.”
He studied her face, as if something there might help him understand. Finally, he nodded. “If you’re going to do this, then I’m going to do what I can to protect you.”
“If you lovebirds are done with your little tête-à-tête, I’ll go now.” Sammy moved toward the door. “I’ll call you here at the hotel and let you know what time.”
“Are you going to tell Pop ahead of time that I’m coming?” she asked.
“Are you kidding? I wouldn’t pass up the chance to have him thank me for bringing back his favorite child.”
She followed him to the door, Jake close behind them. “I still can’t believe you’d trust a fed,” Sammy said as he stepped into the hall. “Or that he’d trust you.”
“Why wouldn’t I trust her?” Jake asked.
“After the way she betrayed you? If a woman did that to me, I know I wouldn’t be so forgiving.”
“Betrayed me?” Jake sent Anne a puzzled look.
“Sammy, I don’t think—” she began.
He grinned—that horrible, gloating smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “You mean he doesn’t know?” He nudged Jake. “Your girlfriend here is the one who gave you up to Pop. She’s the reason you almost died that night.”
Chapter Sixteen
Anne waited until her brother had stepped into the elevator down the hall before she shut and locked the door of the hotel room. She could feel Jake’s gaze on her, burning into her back. Her stomach churned and she had trouble taking a deep breath. Sammy was a fine one to talk of betrayal; the obvious delight he took in revealing her secret to Jake wounded her almost as much as her father’s turning his back on her that day in court.
She forced herself to face Jake once more. His expression was grim, lines of strain deepening around his eyes. “Is it true?” he asked. “Did you betray me to your father?”
“Not deliberately. Though, in the end, the result was the same.”
He crossed his arms over his chest, his posture rigid. “Tell me,” he said.
How many times over the last year had she revisited that fateful day? How often had she played the depressing game of “what if?” What if she’d never spent that night at Jake’s apartment? What if she’d never said what she had to her father? What if she’d been smarter, or shown more discretion, or at least hadn’t been so trusting...
“Do you remember when I spent the night at your place, two days before the party where you were shot?” she asked.
“Yes.” His voice were clipped, his expression wary.
“Then you remember how you went downstairs to get takeout from the deli on your building’s ground floor.” She forced herself to continue. “I stayed behind to wait.”
“You didn’t want to get up and get dressed,” he said. “So you waited for me in bed. Naked.”
She shivered, as if chill air had just crossed her bare skin, though the room was warm, and the look he gave her heated, despite the anger she sensed that lay just beneath the surface. “I decided to fix us a drink, so I got up and went into the kitchen. I found a bottle of wine that looked good, so I started looking through drawers for the corkscrew.”
“And you found something besides the corkscrew,” he said.
“Yes.” She met his gaze, silently pleading for understanding. “I found a mini digital recorder. I didn’t play the recording or anything—I really didn’t even think anything of it. I put it back in the drawer and kept searching until I located the corkscrew and opened the wine.”
“And then I came back with dinner and we continued our evening together.”
“Yes.” They’d drunk the wine and eaten salad and calzones and made love until they were both sore and sated. She closed her eyes against the images her mind insisted on replaying—of Jake, naked and reaching for her, a look of such tenderness and passion in his eyes it still left her trembling.
“I don’t understand what this has to do with your supposed betrayal,” he said.
She opened her eyes again. “The next day, I was in my father’s office at our apartment. I was looking for a stamp to mail a thank-you note and he was complaining that the tape system he used to record all his phone calls was malfunctioning again. I told him he ought to get one of those mini digital recorders. It would take up so much less space and he wouldn’t have to mess with tapes. He wasn’t very tech savvy, and he didn’t know what I was talking about, so I told him you had one—that you’d probably be glad to show him. It was small enough to put in your pocket and no one would ever even know it was there.”
“And that made him wonder why I had a recorder that could be hidden so easily.”
“Later, he came to me and started asking more questions—about what you did when you weren’t with me, who your friends were, what else I’d seen at your apartment. I was confused, but I thought he was just being the typical overprotective father. I told him what I knew, but I truly didn’t think anything of it. When I asked him why he was so interested, he told me not to worry, that he would take care of everything.”
“Meaning, he would take care of me.”
“If I’d had any idea what he was planning, I would have warned you, I swear. I never thought—” Her voice broke and she covered her face with her hands, reliving the horror of Jake bleeding to death in her arms. “I’m so sorry. When I think if all you suffered because of my foolishness...”
He closed the distance between them and put his arm around her shoulders. “I believe you,” he said softly. “You never meant for me to be hurt. For both of us to be hurt.”
She curled into him, her face pressed into the hollow of his shoulder. Closing her eyes, she breathed in his scent—cotton and fabric softener, and the aroma of clean male skin that was uniquely him. It was the scent she associated with strength and safety and long nights of lovemaking.
“The worst days in the hospital, I would distract myself from the pain by trying to remember every detail of that evening—how you looked, what you said, the way you felt.” He took her hand in his and trailed his thumb across her knuckles, tracing the ridges and valleys, his touch light but sending a jolt of awareness through every nerve.
A fierce desire stabbed her, a need to feel him around her and in her, affirming life in the most elemental way she knew. She raised her head and found his gaze fixed on her, his eyes reflecting the same wanting she felt. “Make love to me,” she whispered.
He caressed the side of her neck, then trailed one finger along her jaw until it rested lightly against her bottom lip. “I’ve wanted to make love to you since the first night I saw you again,” he said. “But are you sure?”
“I’m sure.” She wrapped her hand around his, and kissed his fingertips. “I have no idea what’s going to happen tomorrow, or the next day, or the day after that. All we can count on is now. And right now, I want to be with you.”
“Then I’ll stay. And I won’t leave you until you tell me to go.”
* * *
J
AKE
HELPED
A
NNE
pull her sweater over her head, then steadied her as she stripped off boots and pants. He was glad of something to do to hide the trembling in his hands as he acted out the fantasy that had played in his dreams too long. When she stood before him, naked, he smiled, remembering how bold she’d always been with him before. For all the ways she’d been forced to change in the last year, she hadn’t left that boldness behind.
She took hold of the waistband of his ski pants. “You’re still dressed,” she chided. “We must do something about that.”
He unsnapped the pants, then hesitated. “I have a lot of scars from the shooting and the surgeries afterward,” he said. “It’s not a pretty sight.”
“I saw a little yesterday and I didn’t think you were too horrifying.”
His face must have betrayed his dismay at her choice of words. She laughed and reached for him. “I’m not afraid of scars,” she said. She grasped the tab of his zipper and slowly lowered it. His erection strained against the fabric, eager for her touch. As if answering the unspoken summons, she slipped her hand into his underwear and wrapped her fingers around his length. He pulled her close and lowered his mouth to hers in a fierce, claiming kiss.
Cupping her bottom, he pulled her tight against him, his erection pressed to her stomach, the soft fullness of her breasts flattened against the hard plain of his chest. Desire pulsed between them in time with their pounding hearts. After so long a time apart he forced himself to draw out the waiting a little longer, to savor the anticipation.
Her mouth still locked to his, she tugged at his pants and underwear. He broke the kiss and quickly stripped out of the garments, and pulled his wool sweater and thermal top over his head. While his face was still buried in the tangle of clothing, she placed her hands over his ribs and began kissing her way around the puckered, white scar on his chest that marked a bullet’s path. The touch of her lips was light, little more than a flutter, but he felt the kisses deep within, touching wounds he’d shied away from examining too closely, wounds of doubt and fear and loss, soothed by her tender caresses.
He grasped her by the shoulders and urged her to stand straight. “Let me look at you,” he said.
She stood without shame, letting his gaze take in the full, firm breasts, indented waist and gently curved hips. She was thinner than she’d been before, her ribs standing out more, but she could have gained thirty pounds or lost twenty more and he wouldn’t have cared. To him, she would always be beautiful, the one woman whose body fit him perfectly.
She traced her finger along a network of scars across his chest. “Are all of these from when you were shot?” she asked.
“Some of them are from surgery to remove the bullets, and a port for IV antibiotics to fight an infection.”
Her gaze fell lower, to the scars on his legs. “I suppose you could always tell people you played football or something.”
He laughed, as much from sheer happiness as anything else. “There’s only one athletic pursuit I’m interested in at the moment,” he said, pulling her close once more.
They moved to the bed, slipping between the crisp sheets to lie facing one another. She smoothed her hands down his side, fluttering her fingers along his ribs and coming to rest on his hips. “Every time with you is new,” she said. “And yet so familiar.”
“So right.” He began kissing her again, tracing the line of her jaw, running his tongue along the tender flesh of her throat, relishing the swell of her breasts, and the way her breath caught as he drew the sensitive tip into his mouth. He nipped and licked and teased until she was breathless and writhing beneath him, her body arching upward in a silent plea that made his own desire quicken and intensify.
He moved lower still, to kiss her stomach, and the tender flesh of her inner thighs, and the softly furred mound between her thighs, stroking and coaxing while she moaned her delight. He ached for her, but refused to give in to that aching until he had shown her every pleasure.
She put her hands on his shoulders, urging him upward. “I want you in me,” she pleaded.
“Your wish is my command.” He moved his body alongside hers, then leaned over to open the drawer beside the bed.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“I thought we needed this.” He opened his palm to reveal the condom he’d taken from the drawer.
She smiled. “You think of everything.”
“I try to be prepared.”
“Were you so sure you’d get me into your bed?”
“I wasn’t sure, but I wasn’t going to let anything spoil the moment if I had the chance.”
She held out her hand. “Allow me.”
He handed her the packet and she tore it open and removed the condom, then knelt before him and rolled it on. He held his breath and tried to think of something mundane—multiplication tables or tax codes or anything else to keep him from flying apart as her hands closed around him.
Condom in place, he pushed her gently back against the pillows and knelt between her legs. She flashed a coy smile and reached down to guide him in, and then together they began to move in a dance whose moves they had not forgotten in a year apart. She smiled up at him, face suffused with joy as they increased their tempo, anticipation and tension building.
He slipped his hand between them to fondle her, and was rewarded with a breathy “Yes!” Her eyelids fluttered and her head fell back as passion overtook her. “Jake,” she cried, then louder, “Jake!” A sound of triumph and completion as she tightened around him.
He held on for a few more thrusts, then surrendered to his own need, months of fear and worry and denial vanquished in the letting go.
They lay crushed together for a long moment, coming back to themselves, waiting for breath and heart to slow. At last, he rolled off of her, but she clung to him, pressing her face against his chest.
“What are we going to do, Jake?” she asked after a while, after he’d pulled the covers over them and was drifting toward sleep.
“What are we going to do about what?” He forced himself out of slumber, and smoothed his hand down her back, reassuring himself that yes, she was real, and this was no dream.
“About tomorrow, to start with. I know you don’t think I should go with Sammy to see my father.”
So reality would insist on intruding on this moment. Well, that was what had brought them here, after all. “I don’t trust Sammy,” he said. “He was too smug. Too sure of himself.”
“He was like that before—don’t you remember? He’s my father’s son, and all the men in my family have that cocky attitude. It’s all about power and control. Never let anyone see you sweat.”
“He’s jealous of you and of your relationship with your father.” As much as he disliked Sammy, he didn’t blame him for the jealousy. Even in Jake’s brief time with the family, he’d seen the difference in the way Sam Giardino treated his children, spoiling his daughter and denying his son. “Maybe he thinks he can raise himself up in your father’s eyes by delivering you to the old man on a platter.”
“Maybe you’re right. But my father loved me more than anything else in the world,” she said.
“You said before that kind of love might turn to hate.”
“Did your love for me turn to hate?” she asked.
“No.” He kissed her forehead. “Never.”
“I thought I could convince myself to hate you, but it turned out to be impossible.” She settled her head against his chest once more. “Once I knew you were alive again, all my old feelings for you started growing again. I don’t think you can ever turn off or put aside love like that.”
“No, you can’t,” he agreed. Love like that could keep you going through hell. It could make life worth living—and make you miserable, sometimes at the same time. “And you still love him.”
“Yes. In spite of everything, I do. If there’s a chance to patch things up with him, I have to take it.”
“And then what? You let him go on his way, back to his life of crime? He welcomes you back into the family fold and you go back to being the pampered mafia princess?”
She rose up on one elbow, so she could look him in the eyes. “I could never go back to that life,” she said. “I’d have to leave again, but at least I could do so knowing I still had a family. I still had a father who loved me, no matter how flawed he is.”
“And after you leave, I’ll have to bring in Thompson and his men to arrest your father. And your brother, too, if he tries to interfere.” One thing he wouldn’t do was lie to her—not ever again.