“Yeah?” He ran his hands down her body slowly. “Do you want to stay here, or do you want to stay at my place?”
Surprised, she blinked. “Uh… well. I want be home, but I also want to be with you. Maybe you can stay with me for a while longer?”
“That’s OK with you?”
“That’s OK with me.”
“So consider it done.”
She nodded quietly. He sensed her mood, didn’t push her to talk any more. He cradled her, just tucked her body up against his, let every inch of her rest on his massive frame.
“Mark?”
“Right here, babe.”
She started to say something, hesitated, then shook her head. She’d been doing this a lot since they’d gotten back to Denver: saying his name, clearly wanting to say something, then backing down at the last second. Mark had let it go for three days now, but he was becoming really worried about her.
“Francine?”
She jerked her head up. “Yes?”
“What are you afraid to say to me, babe?”
“How’d you know –” She broke off. Yeah, of course he knew. “I’m… I’m sorry.”
“For what?” Perplexed, he lifted her chin. “What in the world have you got to be sorry about?”
“For – for not talking to you.”
“Sugar, all you’ve done is talk to me.” Mark held her eyes, hating to see the uncertainty swimming around in them. “You’ve talked to me about everything, and I know how hard that was for you. You’ve talked to the cops, and the doctors, and you haven’t glossed over anything that happened. You’ve shared it all.”
“Not all.”
Mark froze, suddenly scared damn near to death. He was sure that Francine hadn’t been raped – the medical tests had confirmed that, and no doubt – but maybe she’d omitted something that had happened. Something that that sick prick had said or done… maybe he’d touched her, after all, and maybe that touch went beyond the physical.
“OK,” he said calmly. “You want to tell me now?”
“It’s more of a question, actually,” she said. “A question for you.”
“Alright. Ask.”
“OK.” She took a deep breath. “We only had one night together, before all of this happened.”
“Uh-huh. I remember.”
“And… is that enough?”
“Enough for what?” he said, genuinely confused.
“Enough for you.” She wasn’t looking at him now. “Enough for you to stay here through all this crap.”
“Wait,” Mark said, still not getting it. “What are you really asking me, babe?”
“I’m asking you if it makes any sense whatsoever for you to stick around, and comfort a traumatized woman that you spent only one night with,” she burst out. “It’s not like I’m your wife, or your long-term girlfriend. Hell, I’m not your girlfriend at all. I’m a woman that you dated for a week, and slept with for one night, and now here you are, stuck with me.”
“What?” He sat up. “I’m what?”
“Stuck with me!” she retorted. “You’re a good man, Mark, probably the best man that I’ve ever met, and so I understand why you rode to my rescue, OK? But all this…” She waved down at their fully-clothed bodies, at the light on in the hallway. “This is just – this is trauma. This is recovery, and healing. This is damn hard work, and it’s not your work. It’s mine. So don’t feel that you have to help me, out of some misplaced sense of honor. Because you don’t, you know. You don’t owe me anything.”
“Holy fuck.” His voice was low, furious. “Tell me you’re fucking kidding right now.”
“No. I’m not.” She looked away again, crossed her arms. “I’m giving you an out. So take it.”
“No.”
“Look, I know what’s involved here, OK? This is my job, Mark, this is what I’ve done, and lived, and breathed, for over a decade. And I know that when something like this happens, it ruins relationships.” Francine sighed. “I’ve met strong, amazing, loving couples with long histories, and the man has been totally dedicated to helping the woman through. And in many, many cases, they just don’t make it. They can’t handle it, and all the shared history and goodwill in the world can’t get past the trauma.”
“Francine –”
“Mark, please.” She was begging now. “Please. I don’t want you to put yourself through this, all for a woman that you have no commitment to. I don’t want…” She faltered, found her courage. “I don’t want you to resent me, and I don’t want to cling to you. I don’t want us to feel… obligated to each other.”
“That’s not going to happen to us, babe.”
Her lip quivered. “Mark… I’m so damn grateful to you. You saved my life, you and the other guys, and I’ll never, ever be able to pay you back for that. But I think it’s better if we just… go our separate ways. Call it quits. Walk away with some great memories.”
“No,” he repeated, his anger evident in that single syllable. “I’m staying here.”
“But – why?” she said. “How can you actually find any of this worth it? You do know that I can’t make love, right? That I maybe won’t be able to for a while?”
“So?” he snapped.
“So?” She shook her head. “So… we’re back to my first question: is that one night that we had together enough? Enough to justify you being here through all this crap?”
“Oh, my God.” He took a deep breath, forced himself to cool it. She was frightened, he knew, and also dead earnest. She needed to hear how he really felt about her, and that meant that he had to be fucking crystal clear. “Francine, sugar… I’m not here with you now because of that one night we spent together.”
She gazed at him, silent.
“I mean, don’t get me wrong,” he said. “It was an incredible night. The best I’ve ever known. But it’s not all that we have between us, is it? And it’s not the first thing that I think about when I think of you.”
“…It’s not?”
“Of course not. Jesus.” He reached for her now, and was gratified when she didn’t hold herself away. “Babe, we have so much on our side, so much between us.”
“We do?” she asked softly.
“Sure, we do.” He tugged her closer, and she came. “Think of that night at Alexandra’s, yeah? Isn’t facing down a damn psycho a bonding experience?”
She gave a watery giggle. “Yeah. Maybe.”
“You amaze me, babe. You started amazing me that night with Rick Mayer, and you haven’t stopped yet. What you did, at that safe house? The way that you just stepped between Delacroix and those women? Between him and Emma and her baby, between him and Liv? Jesus, Francine. You saved lives that night, and if you don’t think that I’m in open-mouthed awe and admiration about that, then you’re crazy.”
She gave a small sob.
“C’mon now, don’t do that.” So gently, he wiped her tears. “You’re the most astounding woman I know, the strongest, smartest, bravest woman that I will ever know. I know what Delacroix did to you was a nightmare, and I know that you had to hurt him in a way that I wish you hadn’t… but you protected yourself against a monster, babe. You didn’t lie down and die, didn’t just get hysterical and lose it, didn’t shatter in to a million pieces and give up. You kept your cool and your smarts, and you did what you needed to do.”
“What’s that?”
“You stayed alive.” Mark kissed her forehead, careful to avoid her stitches. “You stayed alive, and you came back to me.”
She exhaled, a soft, lost little sound. “Yeah.”
“So that’s what’s between us, at least from my end.” Mark stroked her hair. “Now. What’s between us from your end?”
She went silent again, but at least she was still in his arms. He waited now, just let her think things through. He wanted her to
see, to really see, that he wasn’t here for the sex, and he wasn’t here out of pity.
He was here because she was all that he wanted. She was all that he’d ever want, ever again.
“That night, with Rick Mayer,” she said slowly. “You – you just jumped right in, and helped a total stranger. You held me when I was upset, and then you held me while I slept. Brought me coffee in the morning, brought me Chinese food that night. Brought me my car. Cooked for me at your place. Came for me when you had no idea what you’d find in that cabin, and saved me. Crawled in to bed with me to make me feel safe.”
“Yeah. I’ve done all of that.”
“And that’s the trouble!” She was upset again, and he stared at her. “I feel like all you’ve done is take care of me.”
“What?”
“And I feel like you’re still taking care of me!” She pushed away, almost shouting at him now. “I don’t like being the poor, downtrodden, weak little woman constantly in need of rescue, Mark! I hate it, actually.”
“Have you not been listening to me, woman?” Mark almost shouted back. “Have you not heard all the ways that you’ve been everything but the pathetic little woman in need of rescue? Haven’t you heard all the ways that you’re rescued yourself? Rescued others?”
“I –” Francine shut her mouth, opened it again, shut it again. “I – no.”
“You missed all that, huh?”
“…I guess I did.”
“Pig-headed woman.”
“Hey,” she said, indignant. “Enough with the name-calling, Hayden, or I’ll start abusing you in French.”
“Also?” he said, relentless in driving home the point. “Have you totally forgotten that over dinner at my place, and in bed after making love, we talked, sugar… God, we talked. Right? About our jobs, and our educations, and our families, and our favorite movies and music. Yeah?”
“Yeah,” she whispered. “That’s true.”
“So, you see, babe? We’ve got way more going for us than one night of mind-blowing orgasms.”
“And the morning after,” she reminded him, a familiar note of teasing finally appearing in her voice. “We had one night and one morning-after.”
“I remember.”
“Me too.”
Their eyes met now, and a hundred things passed between them, all without saying a single word.
“One more thing,” Mark said quietly.
“What’s that?”
“Enough with this bullshit about how I have no commitment to you. You’re my woman, Francine, and no damn debate about it.”
She smiled now, a real smile, and his heart jumped.
“I am?” she said.
“Yeah. You’re the only woman that I want… and the last woman that I’ll ever be with.” He pulled her to him, and she came. “You’re it, babe, and so don’t you ever, ever tell me that I’m here out of obligation. Fuck that. I’m here because I want to be with you. Just you. I’m here for the kissing, and the talking, and the sleeping together in pj’s and butt-naked. For the laughing and the crying. For the silences, and the talking, and every single damn thing in between. I’m here for it all, babe, you get me? I’m here for all of you.”
Francine nodded, finally understanding him, finally accepting what he was saying. “I want to be with you for all of it, too.”
“Then I’ll answer your question now.”
She tipped her head at him. “OK.”
“It’s enough, sugar. You’re enough. You’re more than enough.”
And for the first time since Henri Delacroix had taken her, Francine totally, fully relaxed. Better than that, in this moment, she felt herself start to really heal.
**
The next night, Mark was standing in Francine’s living room, looking out the window anxiously. He paced back and forth, looked out the window some more, checked his watch. He was a wreck, and he damn well knew it.
When her car finally pulled up outside, he launched himself at the door, threw it open. He watched as she walked up the front path to him, and Mark’s green eyes just raked over her, not missing a thing. Looking for a sign how she was doing.
The second she crossed the threshold, he had her in his arms.
“Um, hi?” she said, her voice muffled against his chest.
“Hi,” he said gruffly, not letting up his grip. “You OK?”
“Besides almost suffocating here? Yeah. I’m good.”
Mark relaxed his vise-like hold. Like, barely, but still. He eased up. Kind of. “Really?”
“Really.”
He set her loose now, helped her take off her coat. Then he took Francine by the hand, led her over to the sofa, deposited her there.
“So.” He sat, his whole massive frame rigid with worry. “Tell me how it went.”
“Great,” Francine said, pushing her hair off her forehead. Mark’s eyes flashed with rage at the faint bruising that he saw there, at the bandage covering her stitches, and she quickly covered it up again. “Everyone’s fine.”
“And how was it for you? Being back at the safe house?”
She paused, and his stomach clenched up tight. She’d insisted on going back to work that morning, and he’d tried hard to be totally supportive. Yeah, he’d thought that it was way too soon for her to set foot back there, and he’d said so. She’d fought him on it, though, gone toe-to-toe with him over her morning coffee.
He’d briefly considered barricading all the doors, holding her close and safe that way, but at the end of the day, this was her call, and he knew it. She’d said that she wanted to get eyes on the women and kids, said that she needed to check in.
And so he’d watched her leave the house that morning, then spent the whole day at the office in a state of damn-near-panic. Wondering and worrying. Even Dallas had looked concerned enough about him to avoid cracking a single joke, and that was the surest sign that Mark had looked like hell.
“Babe?” Mark said now, so soft. “Talk to me.”
“Oh.” She shook herself a bit. “It was good. It was just what I needed.”
Sweet, sweet relief. “Yeah?”
“Umm-hmmm. I needed to be around a group of survivors. You know?”
He was taking in air freely now. “Is that what it was about for you?”
“I think so.” Francine frowned a bit. “I mean, at first it was about wanting to see them and making sure that everyone was dealing with that lunatic bursting in to their home. I was coming from a professional place, I suppose.”
“Your therapist side kicking in?”
Francine laughed. “Yeah. She’s hard to turn off sometimes.”
“I’ll bet.”
“Anyway, I was really worried about everyone at the safe house, and maybe Liv most of all. But this morning, I saw that everyone’s doing alright. They’re just so damn strong, Mark, and I think I needed to see that in them. I needed to be around people who’ve figured out how to just carry on after something bad’s happened to them. I drew something from them, I think. Something that I needed.”
He nodded quietly. Yeah, he could understand that, and right now, he was damn glad that he hadn’t kept on fighting her about wanting to go back there. He’d been wrong to doubt her, he saw now, and he’d never been so damn glad in the whole of life to have been wrong.
“So Liv’s doing alright?” Mark said. “After what happened?”
“Believe it or not, Liv’s doing great after what happened. She was shaken at the time, of course, but she came back pretty quickly. Dallas was there for her, and the women and kids pulled together to help her. But I think that seeing Emma’s baby arrive safe and sound was what really pulled her through: she saw him as a sign.”
“A sign? Of what?”
Francine smiled. “Innocence. Hope. New beginnings. Love.”
“All good things
.”
“You know it, mon loup.”
“I love you.” He’d been thinking it all day, and he just let it pop out now, out of the blue. Why the hell not? “I love you, Francine.”
Francine stopped dead, her mouth dropping open. She knew she looked ridiculous, but she couldn’t help it.
“You – you do?” she sputtered.
“I do.”
“Mark.” She shook her head, partly to clear her thoughts, partly to show her disbelief. “It’s too fast.”
“It’s not.”
“It is.”
“It’s not.”
“But –” she began.
“But nothing, babe.” Those green eyes were all fire and fury in his gorgeous face. “Don’t you tell me how I feel.”
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
“I’m not.”
“So what are you doing?” he demanded.
“I’m just – I’m saying it’s fast to be saying something like that.”
“It’s not.” There was nothing but finality in his tone. “And don’t you start this damn conversational loop again, babe, ‘cause I can argue with you about it all night, I swear.”
Stunned, surprised, she just gazed up at him some more. He stared on back down, challenging her to say just one more time that he didn’t love her. He was ready to say it for as long as it took, as many times as it took, to convince her that it was true.
“Um.” She blinked at his set expression. “So… you really do? Love me?”
“I do.”
“Oh.” Francine bit her lip. “You sure?”
“Totally.”
“Oh.”
Mark waited.
“I – I’m –” Her words tapered off.
“You were hurt,” he said softly. “And you’re confused, and you don’t know which way is up. I get all that. I do.” He reached for her hand, so damn carefully. “But I haven’t been hurt, Francine. I’m not confused. I know exactly how I feel… and how I feel is that I love you.”
“Mark,” she said, her voice breaking.
“Right here, babe.”
“…Hold me?”
“Yeah.” His arms wrapped around her, and she fell in to him. “Always, sugar.”
Solid Heart (Unseen Enemy Book 7) Page 22
